Alec

by William di Canzio

  * * *

  The road became a cobblestoned street that sloped down toward the town’s little harbor. Fishing boats were already sailing out past a lighthouse to open water. At a café facing the docks, he asked for coffee and bread. The barmaid helped him count his French coins and giggled at his accent, but when he tried to say sorry for manhandling her language, she grew solemn with courtesy, protesting that she found it charming, truly, when a stranger made the effort. He closed his eyes to savor the warmth of the coffee. This pleased the girl; she spooned some fresh butter onto a saucer and offered it for his bread. He thanked her and left without eating.

  The last of the fishermen were sailing out. The sky was growing sunny, the morning warm, nothing like gloomy Novembers back home. Rather than return to the station to wait three more hours for the train, he walked along the humble esplanade that skirted the harbor and led up to a road hugging the shore.

  The air seemed fresher than any he’d breathed in years, scented with—what? Herbs? Even the weeds in the cracks of the pavement were fragrant. He passed a hotel on the right, advertising rooms (in English and French) with saltwater baths; then farther, on the left, an empty beach. When he reached what seemed the crest of the hill, he noticed a path leading down from the road. He couldn’t see where it went because of the pines and shrubs, but knew it must go toward the sea. He was getting drowsy again, so, hoping to rest by the water, he followed it. The footing was tricky, all stones and roots and brambles; when he pulled aside branches, they’d whip his back as soon as he let go. But when he parted the last of them, he gasped at what he saw: a kind of plateau of enormous rocks, their flat white surfaces sloping right to the edge of the water adazzle with the sunrise; and there, across the sea, a headland—astonishing in its mass—guarding the cultivated hillsides at its base. Smoke rose from the hills, like the wings of an enormous ghostly bird. Its motion somehow made the scene’s stillness visible. The smoke smelled savory, autumnal, like chaff or fallen leaves set fire at home. The farmers were burning the pruned-away branches of grapevines, their harvest having been claimed. He sat on the warm smooth rocks and gazed.

  All of a sudden for no reason he panicked because something unseen wanted to break through the surface of the sea from below, bloodthirsty, monstrous, and more real than the peaceful vision before him. When the terror passed, he lay back in exhaustion. Soon he slept as he had on the train, deeply, unreachably.

  * * *

  He woke in terror—he could see only darkness. It was the wool of his sleeve. He’d covered his eyes with his arm in sleep. He sat up too fast; that made him feel dizzy, sickish. The smoke from the vineyards was gone. How long had he slept? Hours, to judge by the sun. Midafternoon now, and he’d missed the train back to Marseille. He’d have to wait at the station again. About to start on his way toward town, he heard splashing and noticed someone else’s belongings at the edge of the rocks.

  A tall boy climbed out of the sea—sixteen or seventeen, naked and handsome, with dark hair and wide shoulders, his skin ruddy brown from last summer’s swimming. He dried himself with his shirt and called out to another. A second boy stumbled onto the rocks from the water, likewise naked, but shorter and slight, with curly hair and a mischievous grin. He dried himself with the first one’s shirttails—no reason both their shirts should get wet. The taller one swatted at him and lay down.

  Schoolboys. Copybooks among their dark clothes. Lads: that’s how officers spoke of their men. Too young by just a year, he guessed, to have been conscripted for even the end of the war. How he envied them, their limbs lithe and smooth, braving the threat of a chill to be naked together in the sun on this fine fall day.

  The taller one wanted his friend to lie with him. The shorter had put on his glasses, noticed that Alec was awake, and warned the other with a glance. The tall one half raised himself up to look. He sized up the soldier and decided he was harmless: he smiled, waved, called out, “Salut, Tommy!” Alec returned the wave. Then the tall boy removed his friend’s glasses and drew him close. They tussled and laughed. They embraced; they kissed, playfully at first, then ardently. The sight of their love began to probe Alec’s wound.

  He got up and walked back the way he had come, downhill now, past the beach, toward the hotel with the sign in French and English. He sat on a bench across the road from it. His head ached. That meant he should eat, even though he felt no hunger. Except for the coffee at dawn, he’d had nothing today. Maybe he could stay the night in this place and have a meal. Tomorrow he’d catch the train.

  * * *

  On entering the lobby, he saw a bald man of sixty in shirtsleeves taking books from the bookcases, dusting, sorting, and replacing them. He greeted Alec: “Bonsoir, monsieur.”

  Although his tone was perfectly cordial, monsieur stung Alec with unintended irony: his uniform of the other ranks, crushed, shapeless even when new, announced that he was no gentleman. Moreover, this place was posher than he’d taken it for, with lots of buffed woodwork and brass lamps. “Bonsoir, monsieur,” he replied. He cleared his throat and continued with the sentence he’d rehearsed in his head, “J’ai besoin d’une chambre pour la nuit.”

  “It’s okay, sir, you may speak English,” the man said. His accent was American. Putting on his coat, he went to the front desk and showed Alec a list of accommodations with prices in francs and pounds. “Here we are. Most everything’s available, off-season rates.”

  Even the smallest room would have emptied Alec’s wallet. “Might I find a place cheaper down by the harbor?”

  “Yes, I can help you with that.” He paused, folded his hands on the ledger, and looked Alec in the eye: “Do you have time to rest a bit first? I’m about ready for tea. Will you drink a cup with me?”

  “I’d like that. All right, sir.”

  A maid brought the tray. “Years ago,” the man said while he poured, “when I first came here, the local folks claimed tea was poison. Now it’s a big fad. Anyway, lots of our guests are English; most, even. Tell me, what brings you to our little town?”

  He told the man about missing his stop in Marseille, about serving in France, and deciding that he ought to join his brother, who’d emigrated before the war, in Argentina. In a big port like Marseille he figured he could find work on a steamer and so make the passage to South America.

  “That’s quite a trip you’re planning,” he said. “You won’t go home to England and get your bearings before you start?”

  “There’s nothing for me there.”

  “Ah, no family, no girl?”

  Alec’s hands were shaking. This caused the footed, dainty teacup to rattle in the saucer. The noise embarrassed him. His host pretended not to notice. He sliced the apple tart and offered it. Alec accepted a piece and set it aside.

  “My dad’s dead; the rest, overseas with my brother. Anyway, England’s all changed, everything; there’s nothing there for me now.” He noticed the cigarette box on the table. “May I have a smoke?”

  “Of course, by all means.” He passed Alec the matches.

  The maid lit a fire. He was glad for it: the autumn air, warm earlier, chilled quickly with the coming of evening. This room felt full of solace: lamps and a fire, quiet talk, a comfortable chair; cleanliness, order, calm—things he’d once taken for granted. He wished he might rest in this chair forever, but it was time to go. “I thank you for the tea. Maybe now you’d point me to where I might find a room in the town.”

  The hotel manager sighed, as if duty required him to say something unpleasant. “Forgive me, son,” he began, “but you don’t look well to me, quite ill in fact. You’re all done-in. Darkness comes quickly, this time of year. I don’t like sending you away.”

  He knew the man must be right about his looks. And he was surprised by how deeply this stranger’s concern touched him. He felt tears rising, as he often did these days, for no reason. He smothered them with a little laugh and said, “Oh, a wash and a shave, I won’t seem such a tramp.”

  “L
isten. We own the building across the way. There’s a pleasant room, empty, a caretaker’s place. I believe you’d be quite snug there tonight, if you don’t mind the sound of the sea. I could send over some supper. What do you say? Rest there tonight. Then in the morning we’ll see what’s what.”

  He felt obliged to refuse the charity: “I don’t know…” But he was too exhausted to keep up a show of manners. “Only if no one’s put out.”

  The manager was pleased. “No one’s put out, I promise. Come on, then, let’s get you settled.”

  He unlocked a wooden gate in the wall across the road. When they stepped through, Alec beheld the panorama that the guests enjoyed from their pricey rooms above: the harbor, the lighthouse aglow in the fading daylight, the sea, and that sublime cliff he’d seen earlier across the water; and to their left, in the distant northeast, another gigantic outcropping of white stone. The manager said, “They call that the Crown of Charlemagne.”

  The outbuilding appeared to be two stories high in front. But as they walked toward the sea, they descended steps to its lower levels, built into the rocks. The manager opened the door to the lowest. They entered a dusky room. When he parted the long shutters of the big window, he revealed a balcony no wider than an army cot, perched over the Mediterranean. The flood of soft evening light transformed the dim interior into a place of welcome, a refuge. Together the two of them unrolled the mattress and made up the bed. The manager lit a lamp, said he’d send supper at seven. He wished Alec a good rest and left.

  Alec was sure the man knew he would feel more at home in this humble room, with its two rough chairs and gingham curtains for cupboard doors, than he would in the ritzy hotel. He closed his eyes and listened. The sound of the sea, though calm, was loud and close, breaking against the rocks below. Its rhythm took charge of the room, of his thoughts, silenced their anxious nagging, and for that he was grateful. He stepped onto the balcony. Such peacefulness. The lighthouse’s beam pierced the twilight, kept watch over the harbor, where the fishermen’s boats, sails furled and bound, were rocking at their docks. There was nothing between him and the water below. Too weary to stay on his feet, he knelt, gripped the rail, leaned his forehead against it.

  “Come,” he whispered.

  * * *

  The maid was practiced at balancing a tray while knocking. No answer. The sea breeze was chilly—she’d left her shawl in the kitchen—so rather than wait to knock again, she chinked the door open and called, “Monsieur?” No answer. She stepped into the room, as cold inside as out. The English soldier had left the balcony doors wide-open—typical careless foreigner. When she set down the tray to close them, she smelled something foul. Then she saw Alec, lying where he’d sunk down on the balcony, limbs akimbo, a bit of vomit by his mouth, eyes open and glazed. He had soiled himself a bit too, front and back. Taking him for dead, she gasped, “Mère de Dieu!” She crossed herself and ran back to the main building for help.

  She returned with the manager, who knelt next to him. Alec was whispering nonsense now, terrified, rapid-fire. The manager tried to soothe him, “You’re safe, no one can harm you,” but the words failed to get through, and he raved in a crazy undertone, opened his horrified eyes, and blacked out again. They undressed him, shaking their heads at his bony chest and bruised skin, the bullet scar on the ribs under the right arm; they washed him and put him to bed. Since none of the town’s physicians were yet home from the war, they sent for the animal doctor who’d been too old to serve and who, with simple wisdom, diagnosed acute thirst and hunger; or, in medical terms, dehydration and starvation: likely self-inflicted, he conjectured, but likely unintentionally, resulting perhaps from melancholy or despair or prolonged fear in the trenches, what the English were calling shell shock, or, in medical language, neurasthenia.

  They would need to address the thirst before the hunger. But the patient would not wake to swallow water. The veterinarian called for a clean handkerchief. He soaked it in water and twisted it and worked one end gently into Alec’s mouth, between his left cheek and gums, away from his tongue. Thus liquid might be absorbed from the cloth in minute amounts into the patient’s system. He had used the technique successfully with sick livestock.

  He instructed the others to keep the handkerchief wet through the night in the hope the young man might come around. If and when that should happen, then they were to withdraw it slowly and give him water by the spoonful until he could drink.

  * * *

  A corpse in an officer’s uniform, missing a third of his skull, called the steps: waltz, foxtrot, cakewalk! Who were these dancers, these musicians, all goggle-masked? What was this place? Indoors or out? Was the ceiling so high it was out of sight, or was that the sky overhead, lightless and hard as the gigantic stone walls? Were they bats with baby faces flying above, or babies with bat wings? Why the scaffold, why the noose?

  The officer-corpse led a prisoner aloft to the gallows. The prisoner was Alec. Alec watched himself being led. A hangman covered his head with a hood, yet somehow the blackness within was visible. He felt the noose being slipped over the hood and tightened around his neck. He heard the hangman cock the lever that governed the gear that would release the platform underfoot. He knew that unless he woke up, he would die when the platform dropped, and not just in this dream. He tried to yell, but the hood, having gotten stuffed into his mouth, gagged him. At last a choking noise came out of his throat—

  A child whispered from somewhere beyond the stone walls, “Maman, le soldat se réveille…”

  Then an unseen hand pulled the part of the hood that was gagging him out of his mouth, up over his nostrils as far as the bridge of his nose. He still couldn’t see, but at least he could breathe now, and the hanging was stopped. Then he felt a trickle of water on his lips, as welcome to taste as the air was to breathe. He opened his mouth to taste more. He felt metal, a spoon, press against his lower lip and pour its little measure of water into his mouth, more delicious than he’d ever drunk. He swallowed; he felt it go down and cut through the parchedness in his throat; then the spoon again, the measure of water, and he swallowed.

  * * *

  “Happy,” she called the cat. She breathed heavily on the H, because (she instructed both Happy and the soldier) that is how it must, must be pronounced in English. Hortense, seated near his head on the pillow, also received the lesson, but the doll’s H, unlike Happy’s, was not to be so roughly breathed because then (Mama said) it sounded like a very rude word in English.

  She was content to dawdle in his room, which they kept warm and was bright all day and lively with the sounds of the harbor. She was content to have such a compliant grown-up among her playthings, someone not always correcting her behavior and speech. Like the cat and Hortense, he didn’t talk back; no, he didn’t talk at all.

  Today she decided that Hortense should marry the English soldier. She tried to get Happy to sit still for the wedding, but the cat wanted to jump on the table or stalk birds outside. Then she changed her mind and decided that she would marry him herself, with Hortense as the judge, and that he, the bridegroom, must be a fisherman with a blue boat. Then she changed her mind again: he must be a schoolteacher from Marseille. No, he must be the patron of the manor with the pink walls on Cap Canaille. No, the patron was too old; he must be his son. His name must be Henri.

  At last he found voice enough to speak. “Mais non, mademoiselle…” The child’s eyes widened at the gravelly sound. He cleared his throat and continued: “Je m’appelle Alec.”

  She ran off yelling, “Maman, le soldat peut parler!”

  29

  When he tried to stand, he felt dizzy and nauseated and immediately sat. The child’s mother found him thus on the edge of the bed and helped him to lie back down; she lifted his ankles and pulled the covers up. The cat jumped onto his chest to snooze. She shooed it; Alec was soon asleep again.

  He slept mostly till Christmas. Daytime dreams were pleasant, not that he could recall details, only that they o
ccurred in sleep so deep that he woke knowing neither time nor place and befuddled by the light rippling above him. Was he underwater? In the pond at the boathouse? Then he’d remember where he was and recognize the movement of the sea reflected on the ceiling. He felt safe. Not at night, though, when panic might wake him up yelling. He was glad the sound of the waves muffled the noise so that he didn’t scare the child and her mother, who lived upstairs.

  During those weeks, the horse doctor looked in on him every third day. Alec wondered how this man’s hand was able to feel both warm and cool at once. It was a welcome touch. He would press his ear against Alec’s ribs to listen; he would sit Alec up, thump his back, and listen. Another man, younger, maybe forty years old, visited regularly too. He’d served as a medic on a Red Cross ship but was not a doctor. A big fellow, he helped Alec wash and could easily lift him out of bed onto a chair. Alec felt himself light in his arms; he’d lost much weight.

  By New Year’s he was walking again and by mid-January doing chores to reduce the debt he wished to assume for his care. His mind was clear enough to find his brother’s address in his knapsack. He wrote to his mother there:

  I was under the wether a bit shortly after the peace, nothing serious. Dont You Worry. I’m fine now and found work in France for the time being, even putting some by. Soon I shall make my way to see you.

  The reply came from Fred, who wrote “with the very greatest sadness” that Aderyn and her granddaughter, Rita, were buried together in the Protestant cemetery in Buenos Aires, “both carryed off November last by the Influenza. The child took sick and Ma would not be kept away from her, Jane is brought low in her spirits.”