Edward had prints ready by midmorning and ran them up to show van Horn.
“They’ve halted the attack,” he said. “At least in this part of the line.”
Van Horn flipped through the series, his lips pursed and frowning.
“Send these to Chaumont right away,” he said. “If they’ve stopped here, it doesn’t mean they have stopped everywhere.”
But they had. Edward could see from the photographs taken by other observers that all along the length of the salient, wherever they had made advances, there were the same marks of digging, stringing barbed wire, the same signs that meant tired men had collapsed with their backs to the wall of newly excavated dirt, huddling down and getting ready to defend themselves: their turn now to prepare for an attack.
MARION DID WRITE to him as she had promised she would. Her letter came toward the end of the first week of the battle.
Dear Steichen,
I have never seen anything like this. Since the beginning of this attack we have been overcrowded and every day they bring in the wounded, so many that I think at the end of each shift it isn’t possible for us to absorb even one more. And yet the next day they come and we find space for them, on the floor, or in one of the tents that has been put up outside on the grounds. We do our best for them, but everything is in short supply. This above all makes the work difficult. At first I tried to hold on to each of the faces, keep them pictured clearly in my mind, as though to lose them was a form of surrender. But after the first few days, they began to blur, and now I have trouble recalling any of them at all.
But I am holding together. I sleep for a few hours each night, and it is surprising how little rest one really needs. I have some time to myself each day, and because I am too tired to read, I find my mind calling up memories from before the war. Do you remember you took my photograph by the river, that last summer? It made me simultaneously happy and unhappy. I knew I had changed into something new for you. It scared me and I was angry with you, and at the same time, I wanted you to keep watching me as you did that day. I knew also that I was losing something of myself with each passing second.
When things are calmer on the front, I will have my long overdue leave. It will begin in two weeks, most likely, if our side continues to advance. I’ll write to you again when I know more. I will probably go to Paris.
I think of you.
Marion
SEEING THE COUNTERATTACK was like watching time move backward, the massive barrage flung back across the lines, the motions of the opposing armies crawling toward their old abandoned positions. In the space of a day the Germans gave up all the ground they’d taken south of the Marne.
At Soissons, General Mangin led the French 1st Moroccan and the American 1st and 2nd divisions in a surprise attack at dawn. They took the high ground south of the town and the railway station that supplied all the German troops in the Aisne salient. Now the troops there were cut off and could be reached only by the unreliable roads. The American divisions tried to advanced north of Château-Thierry to surround the town. They got close to it; Edward saw only a quarter of a mile of ground between the men fighting their way forward and what was left of the main highway that lead out of town to the north. But toward the end of the day they were beaten back.
Looking at the photographs at the end of the second day, one of the sergeants, Reece, the skinny one with no chin, said: “It’s almost as if the German offensive never happened.”
He held up two prints for Edward to see. Both showed a bend in the river and the front stretching along its northern bank. Reece pointed to the dates in the corner of each: one was from late June. The other had been taken that morning. A farm in the corner of the first picture was standing. In the later picture it was a wreck of timbers and stone. Otherwise, they were identical.
“We should really send these to Berlin as well as Chaumont,” Edward said, “and suggest to them that we just pretend to have the next battle. We might as well.”
There was a knock on the door of the lab. Dawson entered. His mouth was twisted up in an odd grimace.
“Sir,” he said. “It’s Lutz.” His eyes shifted from object to object in the room.
“What happened?” Edward asked. His stomach turned over. Dawson’s expression told him everything but the details.
“Over the country north of Courthiézy, his plane …” He stopped speaking and twisted his mouth back up into that misshapen knot. He leaned onto one of the tables and stared at its empty surface intensely, fighting to compose himself. When he spoke again, the words came slowly, each one a great effort. Lutz’s plane had crashed. It had gone down near the front. It had been trying to land and then tilted too far forward and plummeted straight into the ground.
“It was just an accident. Not an enemy plane in sight. They dived too steeply and crashed. Like they told us at Tours. It just went straight down. I saw it …” His voice ran dry. Edward put down the prints he was holding and walked quickly from the room. In his office he locked the door and then crumpled against the wall, his head in his hands: I could have saved him, he thought. If I’d left when I had the chance.
That night he dreamt of falling. He was plummeting downward, not toward the valley of the Marne, but toward the cornfields near Milwaukee, and then the ranks of buildings that cover the island of Manhattan. In the dream he didn’t feel fear, only curiosity at seeing these old familiar places in this new way, and he realized it was the first time in weeks he had not been afraid. He woke with a clear, new thought in his head: Even bravery is no good; in this war, even that is obsolete.
Slowly over the next week, the lines shifted northward, away from Paris and, less conspicuously, from Voulangis. The Allies crossed first the Marne and then the Vesle and finally the Aisne. Then on August 5 the orders came to halt.
A FEW DAYS later, a letter arrived from Mildred Aldrich. Dear Steichen, she began.
The Paris papers all carry reports of fierce fighting in the Marne and of the Germans in retreat, but as usual there are no details given. I hope that you are safe and well. I’m certain that you have done more than your duty.
I wanted you to know that I have written to Clara of the matter we discussed when you were here. We have exchanged several letters on the subject during the last month. At first she seemed determined to proceed. It is vindication that she seeks as much as revenge; she wants her point of view to be accepted by the world, for people to know that she has suffered, too.
But after I implored her to reconsider, she seems now to be softening. I will write to her again and see whether she will relinquish the suit and settle. I am hopeful that she may be prevailed upon to withdraw it. I will of course tell you the outcome of our discussion.
Meanwhile, the reports of victory hearten us. Amélie has secured a travel permit to go to the Zone of Armies to see some of her family who remained in Huiry. I remembered the case that Kate gave me for you. I will ask her to collect it from my house while she is there. The next time you come to Paris, if I am well enough (to my immense annoyance, my illness of last winter has returned), I can bring it to you. Though I know it does not depend on such inducements, I hope that we will see you soon.
Mildred
Edward sat down the same evening and drafted a response.
Dear Mildred,
I cannot tell you the pleasure and relief it gives me to read that you may yet change Clara’s mind. My greatest thanks to you for interceding in this matter. You have already done more than I could ever have asked.
The worst of the fighting in this area seems to be dying down, and I am scheduled to get some overdue leave. I will come to Paris and will probably stay near Bastille; there is a pension off Rue du Faubourg that is quiet, and calm is what I want above all. I would delight to see you when I arrive. If Amélie has the case that Kate left me, all the better.
I plan to arrive in Paris in a week’s time. But I have something I have to do first. When I get leave, I’m going to go, at long last, back to my h
ouse in Voulangis.
Refugees. France, September 1914. Gum print.
FIRST THERE ARE men in uniform moving along the roads, heading north and east. Companies of infantry in ill-fitting blue coats and red trousers, their silhouettes deformed by the heavy packs they carry. They trudge past at a steady rate, and their marching seems to Clara to be an involuntary movement, like the tremor that passes along a pinched nerve. They don’t want to go to war, or rather their desires have become suddenly irrelevant. Whatever their feelings, they proceed and stop when they are told to. Sometimes they halt at the crossroads beyond the house or in one of the nearby fields. She brings them tea or water, bread if there are not too many of them. Mary helps her. Seated under the trees, the men play cards, betting for matches. They are grateful for the tea and the officers are very polite.
As well as the foot soldiers, there are cavalry and companies of gunners. Their horses pull the heavy carriages of the .75s and machine guns, the wagons full of ammunition. There are auxiliaries bringing the canteens and the ambulances. The roads are full of them, sometimes too crowded for any other traffic to pass.
She doesn’t want her children to see the guns, which are so strange yet so uncannily familiar. They look just the way she imagined they would, the smooth metal barrels tilted skyward, descending to the complex apparatus of bolts and screws that is used to fire them, the hinged door where the shell goes in. Kate, in any case, hides from the soldiers, refusing to come out of the house when they are around, or ducking behind a chair, a wall, a tree, if a group of them come suddenly into view. She has been staying in her room a lot in the past weeks. Under normal circumstances this would worry Clara. She’d coax her daughter downstairs, try to bring her out of that shy dreaminess into which she’s disappeared. But nothing is normal at the moment. If Kate wants to stay in her room reading all day, then let her. At least it keeps her out of the way of the grown-ups, and away from the tense atmosphere in the rest of the house.
Soon, on the roads, there are civilians as well, fleeing the fighting. They are heading in the opposite direction from the soldiers, an undertow sliding quietly south and west against the war’s prevailing current. There are only a few to begin with and then each day there are more—old men, women, small children—riding in farm carts or pushing wheelbarrows filled to capacity with all that they could salvage of their lives: clothing, pots and pans, furniture, lamps, piles of books tied into bundles. Some of them are bringing animals with them, a crate full of chickens or a single cow yoked to their wagon with a rope. She sees a family who have balanced an armoire across the handlebars and saddle of a bicycle: they are taking turns pushing it and walking behind, keeping it balanced. They make slow but determined progress, stopping often to rest. She wonders why on earth anyone would put themselves through such an ordeal for an old wardrobe. She sends Mary after them with water and sandwiches. She watches them until they pass the crest of the next hill.
Edward carries his camera out and takes photographs of people, their baggage, sometimes of the soldiers as well, although he is cautious about this after their visit from Perrine. He talks to the refugees, falling into step beside them for a while. Clara watches him, his long stride easily keeping pace. Then he leaves them and comes back toward the house, until he meets someone else along the road. Sometimes he will stay outside for hours, talking and taking pictures, returning only as it gets dark.
Since the day when Clara found him and Marion together, a frosty truce has crystallized between them. She and Edward avoid each other as much as possible in private, though they are civil in front of their children. On one or two occasions, or perhaps it is more than that (she does not care enough to recall), he has come to her when she is alone and he has tried, again, to apologize. He has repeated his claim that there was nothing going on behind her back, asked her to forgive him. But if there was really nothing going on, why all this begging forgiveness? She is not stupid; she has known him for too long, lived through too many of his infidelities. Now when he comes to her looking as though he wants to say something, she turns and walks out without giving him a chance to start.
For her part, Marion keeps out of the way, although this hasn’t been easy. In the immediate aftermath of Clara’s discovery, Marion, too, had come and solicited her, tried to explain that she was making a mistake. For a minute, seeing her friend’s distress, Clara thought that perhaps she was telling the truth. How she wanted to believe it! But then she remembered their stricken expressions when she entered the room that day. The angle of their bodies leaning together. The way he could not afterward look her in the face. How disgusting it was. She has nothing to say to either of them.
But because of the mobilization, Marion cannot leave; none of them can. There are no passenger trains—there haven’t been since war was declared. Edward has driven to the station several times and they have told him repeatedly that the railroads are being used only for war purposes. The stationmaster could not or would not say more than this. Nor are the newspapers any help in getting accurate information. They say that the French are fighting valiantly and will be victorious over the German aggressors. They are filled with stories of noble sacrifice, the confidence of the High Command in a swift victory. They talk of atrocities committed against Belgian civilians by the Boches. They do not explain the people on the road; they do not say whether Edward and Clara and their children should stay or leave.
So they wait, all of them, for a sign, something that will tell them what to do next. Inside, the house feels like it has grown thorns up and down its corridors, every room prickling and uncomfortable to inhabit. Mary, of course, could tell at once that something had happened between her mother and father. As might be expected, she asked her Papa about it—Clara came upon them in the salon one day talking with serious faces, and when they saw her, they both stopped, alarmed, and looked at her. Since then Mary has not mentioned it; none of them have. They are all acting as though nothing has happened. It has gone under the surface, but all of them feel it, seeping, poisonous, into everything.
Clara keeps busy: the women in town have all begun baking their own bread because the bakeries are short of men to work in them, and so she buys provisions and joins them. She helps François bring the last of the summer vegetables in from the garden. They begin planting the corgettes and squash for autumn, even though she has no notion of where they will be when this crop is ripe and ready for eating. When this is finished, she drives to Mildred’s house and helps with her planting. She feels better when she is doing something with her hands, and this is why she brings provisions to the soldiers and the other travelers. She is creating a hard shell for herself, and it keeps her from collapsing, or flying to pieces right there in the middle of her own house. In a sense, the war has been a great boon to her. It has given her a reason to maintain her composure.
ONE MAN TALKS about a town to the east of them that burned.
“We saw the light of it from miles away, and that’s when we began to make preparations to go away. One house must have caught alight after a bomb exploded and it spread: you know how the buildings are in those small towns, so close together. There will be nothing left of the place by now. It was on a hill, so we could see it behind us as we were leaving, orange and the black smoke hanging above it in a cloud. Must have burned for three days.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” his wife puts in. “Two days, it only burned for two days.”
They all have stories, these people, of what the war looks like or sounds like. For some of them it was enough to hear the guns in the distance and they were ready to pack their belongings and leave.
“It sounds like thunder when it’s far away,” one of them tells him. “But fast, close together.”
“It sounds like a gigantic drum,” another says.
Edward takes their photographs as they pass by, capturing tired faces and bent backs, the strange piles of belongings that they have made of their lives. He asks them where they are from, and at first the n
ames of the towns are unknown to him. He asks them where they are going, and some of them say that they are going to their relatives in the south, or to friends in Toulouse, Orléans, Marseilles. But many of them shrug and say they do not know for certain. They are only going away from the war.
Gradually, the names of the places these people have come from start to sound more familiar. They are towns near the Aisne, only a few miles to the north. He checks on his maps at home, and indeed, if the stories that he’s hearing are right, then the war is now no more than a day’s walk away. But still there is no definite news; no information from the government. Nothing to tell him for certain what to do.
He decides to wire Alfred in New York. They may be getting a more accurate picture of what is going on precisely because they are further away. He drives to town and sends the telegram: WHAT SHOULD WE DO? The words go out into the world in clicked points and dashes, racing down thousands of miles of cables to their destination across the ocean. He watches the operator send them behind the desk of the mairie. Then he comes home to wait for an answer.
He has been spending as much time as possible out of the house. Even these photographs are in part a reason for him to be outside, away from the cauldron that his own home has become. When Clara left him on the day of their fight, he had gone immediately to his study and closed the door. He’d stretched out on the bare floor and closed his eyes and felt himself tossing on the waves of anger that surged through him. He felt cheated, but he wasn’t sure by whom. By Clara, he supposed, by her accusations, her unwillingness to listen to reason. But was it only by her? Look me in the face, she had said, and he couldn’t make himself do it.
The Last Summer of the World Page 26