'Probably one of those new phosphorus shells the Royalists are using. A fiendish weapon, we're hoping to get them banned.'
With a grimace of anger, Dr Edwards put on his battered UN helmet. Ryan was glad to see this brave, if slightly na·ve man, in some ways more like an earnest young priest than a doctor, who spent as much time in the Beirut front line as any of the combatants. Dr Edwards could easily have returned to his comfortable New England practice, but he chose to devote himself to the men and women dying in a forgotten civil war half a world away. The seventeen-year-old Ryan had struck up a close friendship with Dr Edwards, and brought to him all his worries about his sister and aunt, and even his one-sided passion for Lieutenant Valentina, the strong-willed commander of the Christian guard-post at the telephone exchange.
Dr Edwards was always caring and sympathetic, and Ryan often exploited the physician's good nature, milking him for advance news of any shift in military alliances which the UN peacekeeping force had detected. Sometimes Ryan worried that Dr Edwards had spent too long in Beirut. He had become curiously addicted to the violence and death, as if tending the wounded and dying satisfied some defeatist strain in his character.
'Let's have a look at the poor devils.' He led Ryan towards the soldiers propped against the reception counter, their weapons and personal letters arranged at their feet in a grim tableau. 'With any luck, we'll find their next of kin.'
Ryan pushed past Captain Gomez, who was muttering over his uncooperative camera. He knelt beside the youngest of the dead soldiers, a teenager with dark eyes and cherubic face, wearing the bulky camouflage jacket of the International Brigade.
'Angel...? Angel Porrua...?' Ryan touched the spongy cheeks of the fifteen-year-old Spaniard, with whom he often went swimming at the beaches of East Beirut. Only the previous Sunday they had rigged a makeshift sail on an abandoned dory and cruised half a mile up the coast before being turned back by the UN naval patrol. He realised that he had last seen Angel scrambling through the waterlogged debris of the artificial lagoon in the atrium. Perhaps he had recognised Ryan on the mezzanine staircase, and had been trying to surrender as he and Captain Gomez opened fire.
'Ryan?' Dr Edwards squatted beside him. 'Do you know him?'
'Angel Porrua - but he's in the Brigade, doctor. They're on our side.'
'Not any more.' Clumsily, Dr Edwards pressed Ryan's shoulder in a gesture of comfort. 'Last night they did a deal with the Royalists. I'm sorry - they've been guilty of real treachery.'
'No, Angel was on our side...'
Ryan stood up and left the group of soldiers sharing a six-pack of beer.
He stepped through the dust and rubble to the ornamental island in the centre of the atrium. The bullet-riddled tamarinds still clung to their rockery, and Ryan hoped that they would survive until the first of the winter rains fell through the roof. He looked back at the Royalist dead, sitting like neglected guests who had expired at the reception counter of this hotel, weapons beside them.
But what if the living were to lay down their weapons? Suppose that all over Beirut the rival soldiers were to place their rifles at their feet, along with their identity tags and the photographs of their sisters and sweethearts, each a modest shrine to a ceasefire?
A ceasefire? The phrase scarcely existed in Beirut's vocabulary, Ryan reflected, as he sat in the rear of Captain Gomez's jeep on the return to the Christian sector of the city. Around them stretched the endless vistas of shattered apartment houses and bombed-out office buildings. Many of the stores had been converted into strongpoints, their steel grilles plastered with slogans and posters, crude photographs of murdered women and children.
During the original civil war, thirty years earlier, more than half a million people had lived in Beirut. His own grandparents had been among them, some of the many Americans who had resigned their teaching posts at the schools and university to fight with the beleaguered Christian militia. From all over the world volunteers had been drawn to Beirut, mercenaries and idealists, religious fanatics and out-of-work bodyguards, who fought and died for one or another of the rival factions.
Deep in their bunkers below the rubble they even managed to marry and raise their families. Ryan's parents had been in their teens when they were murdered during the notorious Airport Massacre - in one of the worst of many atrocities, the Nationalist militia had executed their prisoners after promising them safe passage to Cyprus. Only the kindness of an Indian soldier in the UN force had saved Ryan's life - he had found the baby boy and his sister in an abandoned apartment building, and then tracked down their adolescent aunt.
However tragic, Beirut had been worth fighting for, a city with street markets, stores and restaurants. There were churches and mosques filled with real congregations, not heaps of roof-tiles under an open sky. Now the civilian population had gone, leaving a few thousand armed combatants and their families hiding in the ruins. They were fed and supplied by the UN peacekeeping force, who turned a blind eye to the clandestine shipments of arms and ammunition, for fear of favouring one or another side in the conflict.
So a futile war dragged on, so pointless that the world's news media had long since lost interest. Sometimes, in a ruined basement, Ryan came acoss a tattered copy of Time or Paris Match, filled with photographs of street-fighting and graphic reports on the agony of Beirut, a city then at the centre of the world's concern. Now no one cared, and only the hereditary militias fought on, grappling across their empires of rubble.
But there was nothing pointless about the bullets. As they passed the shell of the old pro-government radio station there was a single shot from the ground-floor window.
'Pull over, corporal! Get off the road!' Pistol in hand, Gomez wrenched the steering wheel from Arkady and slewed the jeep into the shelter of a derelict bus.
Kneeling beside the flattened rear tyres, Ryan watched the UN spotter plane circle overhead. He waited for Gomez to flush out the sniper, probably a Nationalist fanatic trying to avenge the death of a brother or cousin. The Nationalist militia were based at Beirut Airport, a wilderness of weed-grown concrete on which no plane had landed for ten years, and rarely ventured into the centre of the city.
If a ceasefire was ever to take hold it would be here, somewhere along the old Green Line that divided Beirut, in this no-man's-land between the main power bases - the Christians in north-east Beirut, the Nationalists and Fundamentalists in the south and west, the Royalists and Republicans in the south-east, with the International Brigade clinging to the fringes. But the real map of the city was endlessly redrawn by opportunist deals struck among the local commanders - a jeep bartered for a truckload of tomatoes, six rocket launchers for a video-recorder.
What ransom could buy a ceasefire?
'Wake up, Ryan! Let's move!' Gomez emerged from the radio station with his prisoner, a jittery twelve-year-old in a hand-me-down Nationalist uniform. Gomez held the boy by his matted hair, then flung him into the back of the jeep. 'Ryan, keep an eye on this animal - he bites. We'll take him to interrogation.'
'Right, captain. And if there's anything left we'll trade him for some new videos.'
Hands bound, the boy knelt on the floor of the jeep, weeping openly from fear and rage. Jabbing him with his rifle stock, Ryan was surprised by his own emotions. For all his hopes of a ceasefire, he felt a reflex of real hate for this overgrown child. Hate was what kept the war going. Even Dr Edwards had been infected by it, and he wasn't alone. Ryan had seen the shining eyes of the UN observers as they photographed the latest atrocity victims, or debriefed the survivors of a cruel revenge attack, like prurient priests at confession. How could they put an end to the hate that was corrupting them all? Good God, he himself had begun to resent Angel Porrua for fighting with the Nationalists...
That evening Ryan rested on the balcony of Aunt Vera's apartment overlooking the harbour in East Beirut. He watched the riding lights of the UN patrol craft out at sea, and thought about his plans for a ceasefire. Trying to forget the day's
fighting and Angel's death, he listened to Louisa chattering in the kitchen over the sounds of pop music broadcast by a local radio station.
The balcony was virtually Ryan's bedroom - he slept there in a hammock shielded from public view by the washing line and the plywood hutch he had built as a boy for his Dutch rabbit. Ryan could easily have moved to any one of the dozen empty apartments in the building, but he liked the intimacy of family life. The two rooms and kitchen were the only home he had ever known.
A young couple in an apartment across the street had recently adopted an orphan boy, and the sounds of his crying reminded Ryan that he at least was related by blood to the members of his family. In Beirut such blood ties were rare. Few of the young women soldiers ever conceived, and most children were war-orphans, though it puzzled Ryan where all these youngsters came from - somehow a secret family life survived in the basements and shantytowns on the outskirts of the city.
'That's the Rentons' new little son.' His sister strolled onto the balcony, brushing out the waist-long hair that spent its days in a military bun. 'It's a pity he cries a lot.'
'At least he laughs more than he cries.' An intriguing thought occurred to Ryan. 'Tell me, Louisa - will Lieutenant Valentina and I have a child?'
'A child? Did you hear that, Aunty? So what does Valentina think?'
'I've no idea. As it happens, I've never spoken to her.'
'Well, dear, I think you should ask her. She might lose something of her elegant composure.'
'Only for a few seconds. She's very regal.'
'It only takes a few seconds to conceive a child. Or is she so special that she won't even spare you those few seconds?'
'She is very special.'
'Who's this?' Aunt Vera hung their combat jackets over the balcony, gazing at them with almost maternal pride. 'Are you talking about me, Ryan, or your sister?'
'Someone far more special,' Louisa rejoined. 'His dream woman.'
'You two are my dream women.'
This was literally the truth. The possibility that anything might happen to them appalled Ryan. In the street below the balcony a night-commando patrol had lined up and were checking their equipment - machine-pistols, grenades, packs loaded with booby-traps and detonators. They would crawl into the darkness of West Beirut, each a killing machine out to murder some aunt or sister on a balcony.
A UN medical orderly moved down the line, issuing morphine ampoules. For all the lives they saved, Ryan sometimes resented the blue helmets. They nursed the wounded, gave cash and comfort to the bereaved, arranged foster-parents for the orphans, but they were too nervous of taking sides. They ringed the city, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, and in a sense controlled everything that went on in Beirut. They could virtually bring the war to a halt, but Dr Edwards repeatedly told Ryan that any attempt by the peacekeeping force to live up to its name would lead the world's powers to intervene militarily, for fear of destabilising the whole Middle East. So the fighting went on.
The night-commandos moved away, six soldiers on either side of the street, heading towards the intermittent clatter of gunfire.
'They're off now,' Aunt Vera said. 'Wish them luck.'
'Why?' Ryan asked quietly. 'What for?'
'What do you mean? You're always trying to shock us, Ryan. Don't you want them to come back?'
'Of course. But why leave in the first place? They could stay here.'
'That's crazy talk.' His sister placed a hand on Ryan's forehead, feeling for a temperature. 'You had a hard time in the Hilton, Arkady told me. Remember what we're fighting for.'
'I'm trying. Today I helped to kill Angel Porrua. What was he fighting for?'
'Are you serious? We're fighting for what we believe.'
'But nobody believes anything! Think about it, Louisa. The Royalists don't want the king, the Nationalists secretly hope for partition, the Republicans want to do a deal with the Crown Prince of Monaco, the Christians are mostly atheists, and the Fundamentalists can't agree on a single fundamental. We're fighting and dying for nothing.'
'So?' Louisa pointed with her brush to the UN observers by their post. 'That just leaves them. What do they believe in?'
'Peace. World harmony. An end to fighting everywhere.'
'Then maybe you should join them.'
'Yes... ' Ryan pushed aside his combat jacket and stared through the balcony railings. Each of the blue helmets was a pale lantern in the dusk. 'Maybe we should all join the UN. Yes, Louisa, everyone should wear the blue helmet.'
And so a dream was born.
During the next days Ryan began to explore this simple but revolutionary idea. Though gripped by the notion, he knew that it was difficult to put into practice. His sister was sceptical, and the fellow-members of his platoon were merely baffled by the concept.
'I see what you're getting at,' Arkady admitted as they shared a cigarette in the Green Line command bunker. 'But if everyone joins the UN who will be left to do the fighting?'
'Arkady, that's the whole point...' Ryan was tempted to give up. 'Just think of it. Everything will be neat and clean again. There'll be no more patrols, no parades or weapons drills. We'll lie around in the McDonald's eating hamburgers; there'll be discos every night. People will be walking around the streets, going into stores, sitting in cafs..
'That sounds really weird,' Arkady commented.
'It isn't weird. Life will start again. It's how it used to be, like it is now in other places around the world.'
'Where?'
'Well...'This was a difficult one. Like the other fighters in Beirut, Ryan knew next to nothing about the outside world. No newspapers came in, and foreign TV and radio broadcasts were jammed by the signals teams of the rival groups to prevent any foreign connivance in a military coup. Ryan had spent a few years in the UN school in East Beirut, but his main source of information about the larger world was the forty-year-old news magazines that he found in abandoned buildings. These presented a picture of a world at strife, of bitter fighting in Vietnam, Angola and Iran. Presumably these vast conflicts, greater versions of the fighting in Beirut, were still going on.
Perhaps the whole world should wear the blue helmet? This thought excited Ryan. If he could bring about a ceasefire in Beirut the peace movement might spread to Asia and Africa, everyone would lay down their arms Despite numerous rebuffs Ryan pressed on, arguing his case with any soldiers he met. Always there was an unvoiced interest, but one obstacle was the constant barrage of propaganda - the atrocity posters, the TV newsreels of vandalised churches that played on an ever-ready sense of religious outrage, and a medley of racial and anti-monarchist slanders.
To break this propaganda stranglehold was far beyond Ryan's powers, but by chance he found an unexpectedly potent weapon - humour.
While on duty with a shore patrol by the harbour, Ryan was describing his dream of a better Beirut as his unit passed the UN command post. The observers had left their helmets on the open-air map table, and without thinking Ryan pulled off his khaki forage cap and lowered the blue steel bowl over his head.
'Hey, look at Ryan!' Arkady shouted. There was some good-humoured scuffling until Mikhail and Nazar pulled them apart. 'No more wrestling now, we have our own peacekeeping force!'
Friendly cat-calls greeted Ryan as he paraded up and down in the helmet, but then everyone fell silent. The helmet had a calming effect, Ryan noticed, both on himself and his fellow-soldiers. On an impulse he set off along the beach towards the Fundamentalist sentry-post 500 yards away.
'Ryan - look out!' Mikhail ran after him, but stopped as Captain Gomez rode up in his jeep to the harbour wall. Together they watched as Ryan strode along the shore, ignoring the sniper-infested office buildings. He was halfway to the sentry-post when a Fundamentalist sergeant climbed onto the roof, waving a temporary safe-passage. Too cautious to risk his charmed life, Ryan saluted and turned back.
When he rejoined his platoon everyone gazed at him with renewed respect. Arkady and Nazar were wearing
blue helmets, sheepishly ignoring Captain Gomez as he stepped in an ominous way from his jeep. Then Dr Edwards emerged from the UN post, restraining Gomez.
'I'll take care of this, captain. The UN won't press charges. I know Ryan wasn't playing the fool.'
Explaining his project to Dr Edwards was far easier than Ryan had hoped. They sat together in the observation post, as Dr Edwards encouraged him to outline his plan.
'It's a remarkable idea, Ryan.' Clearly gripped by its possibilities, Dr Edwards seemed almost lightheaded. 'I won't say it's going to work, but it deserves a try.'
'The main object is the ceasefire,' Ryan stressed. 'Joining the UN force is just a means to that end.'
'Of course. But do you think they'll wear the blue helmet?'
'A few will, but that's all we need. Little by little, more people will join up. Everyone is sick of fighting, doctor, but there's nothing else here.'
'I know that, Ryan. God knows it's a desperate place.' Dr Edwards reached across the table and held Ryan's wrists, trying to lend him something of his own strength. 'I'll have to take this up with the UN Secretariat in Damascus, so it's vital to get it right. Let's think of it as a volunteer UN force.'
'Exactly. We'll volunteer to wear the blue helmet. That way we don't have to change sides or betray our own people. Eventually, everyone will be in the volunteer force..
'... and the fighting will just fade away. It's a great idea, it's only strange that no one has ever thought of it before.' Dr Edwards was watching Ryan keenly. 'Did anyone help you? One of the wounded ex-officers, perhaps?'
'There wasn't anyone, doctor. It just came to me, out of all the death...'
Dr Edwards left Beirut for a week, consulting his superiors in Damascus, but in that time events moved more quickly than Ryan had believed possible. Everywhere the militia fighters were sporting the blue helmet. This began as a joke confined to the Christian forces, in part an irreverent gesture at the UN observers. Then, while patrolling the Green Line, Ryan spotted the driver of a Royalist jeep wearing a blue beret. Soon the more carefree spirits, the pranksters in every unit, wore the helmet or beret like a cockade.
The Complete Short Stories Page 165