by Earle Looker
But time to regret things done and left undone and what might have been – the tousled warmth of a girl’s head, “her hair likened to silk for softness”. Too late now for any gesture toward conscience like Gaspard’s fight with the Oberst, seen now as an act of atonement at the end of a campaign, in reparation for the severity and deception necessary to successfully command. Death now coming slowly enough to see again that all philosophy of the past was less than inconsequential, there was no comfort to be had in the old teachings, no hope in believing the first should be last and the last should be the first. No retribution was deserved yet, neither punishment nor reward.
David was sure there had not been enough of right or wrong in his life to weigh in the imaginary scales, unless it was blood lust killing – and how much of that had been impersonally done in self-defense? There seemed to be no justice, only uncontrolled events in which no account was taken of intent or of hope or of the human soul. Yet now, perhaps as compensation in this time to be able to think as death approached, there was disclosed to him a value more profound than any he had ever known. It was made of truth so old it was timeless, a peculiar and special understanding given perhaps only under such desperate situations – that death was the surest reality of life and that though its question, immortality, seemed never to be answered except in death, it was nevertheless the most vital matter the whole experience of life could ultimately manifest.
2
“Yes, there are advantages in becoming a general officer,” Gaspard admitted to David’s battalion officers seated around the mess hall table. “Par example: your Commandant has to get permission to come here to have dinner with you because he is being punished for the crime I also committed, but now that I have been made a general de brigade, not even your commanding general of division would think of speaking of my identical crimes without laughing. Voila!”
David felt uneasiness. Though Gaspard’s duel with the Oberst had dramatically enhanced his reputation in the Division, becoming something of a legend, and sympathy for David’s own behavior had not been lacking, he knew how failure of headquarters to proffer charges had created the impression he was under surveillance pending more serious disclosures. Gradually, he found himself imprisoned within a cage of tact, the strands of which bristled more heavily with unspoken barbs as he continued to be accorded equivocal treatment by a headquarter becoming noticeably harsher in matters of discipline. The mystery had not been decreased because he steadfastly refused to be drawn out by friends, creating not a little resentment – for comrades should share experience.
“On the other hand, your commandant is a lucky man,” Gaspard said in his judicial tone. “Cannot they see at headquarter he is not idle like the rest of you – he is too busy to be anything but a good boy, hein? So, they are not concerned over his moral character as they are over yours. Ah! These pious reformers, who have been rushed across the sea from America to save the souls of soldiers from these – these whores of French girls! Do not look shocked for me; you need not apologize for fools; we also have them in France here, though not so many.”
The silence about the table was heavy. Gaspard took a sip of wine, wiped his moustache and continued, “Was there ever such a victorious army as yours to which such suggestions have been made, with arrows pointing to the nearest …? Phutt! Reminding every man to be safe whenever he descends from a train, whenever he walks across a public square? Such advertisements for cocottes. Just as effective as the other sign, ‘Defense de Fumer’, which has caused so many millions of cigarettes to be smoked because it commands you must not.”
Gaspard laughed as though he had reminded himself of some episode; the mess looked expectant. He slapped the flat of his hand upon the table and laughed again. “You should have seen your Commandant! When he and I descended upon the platform of the Gare de l’Est, you should have seen this face! It was a study. Of course it was not extraordinary to me, but to him!” Gaspard, seeking confirmation, turned to David.
“Gaspard, it knocked me cold” David said, not knowing what was to follow unless it was a description of the ring of bayonets. “I thought what was to follow was my death by firing squad!”
“Perhaps cold, but then hot,” Gaspard contradicted. “I saw your temperature rise. Ah, but those two; I do not blame you. I ask you, in fair judgment, those two charmantes personnes who then came up to meet us, were they not ravishing?”
There seemed no other way for David to answer than by murmuring, “The little blonde, Gaspard, the little blonde …”
“Non! It was la grand brune, the one to match my beard …”
“That was what you thought,” David said, caught up irresistibly by Gaspard’s spirit. “That was because the girl with the golden hair swerved to me, Gaspard, the moment she compared us.”
Gaspard seemed to consider, “C’est vrai … Am I beginning to show a certain age? Non! I will not admit it. It was because she saw that you were bewildered, and she wanted to see how silly your expression when she put her arms about your neck …”
“Look here,” David interrupted, “I’m not telling stories about you, Gaspard.”
“As if I cared! Say what you like. With my friends, I am merely Henri Gaspard. And was it not the night of the armistice? The day of days! The night of nights! Ah, was it not? And is she still writing to you?”
David felt himself turn scarlet, fingering his class ring.
“Tiens!” Gaspard said. “Do not say I never warned you. A correspondence is dangerous, mon vieux. Any letters might fall into the hands – was there a husband?” Turning to the mess to explain this aside, he added a further fabrication, “How much of his interest is in the danger?”
David felt the whole mess hall regard him more closely. That this persiflage must be founded upon fact seemed an idea to be touching each face about the table. Major Bennett, especially, sparkled in contrast to his usual dourness; he seemed to be anticipating the pleasure of hugging to himself some story of scandal.
Gaspard possessed the ability of the Frenchman to persuade by implication. The rest was filled in so well by his listeners they sometimes seemed to be at the point of belief of some well-nigh perfect, though unspoken, detail when his laughter over the success of his artistry demolished its reality. Yet not quite, as David saw from the expression of the mess waiter. Whenever he appeared from the kitchen, Gaspard trailed off into an obvious “not before-the-servant” silence or else quickly altered the tale, a sure bait for the man’s interest. There seemed a drive behind it, also, of more than an effort to exercise his wit.
“Of course,” Gaspard said, shrugging, “the provinces are not Paris. But have you not done well enough for yourself here?” He gave David no time to answer but rushed on, “I would say so. I heard it a little quarter hour after I arrived.”
David was numbed by the effect of this upon the waiter, engaged with dishes at the opposite side of the table, who had begun to smile to himself, realized it and looked suddenly wooden.
Gaspard turned to David and said, “Name of a name! Is it that little girl in the next village or the other one who makes the blood rush to your face – and somewhere else – as if it would spurt out your nose and then drain it away so pale?”
“Gaspard!” David cried furiously, “This has gone far enough!”
“Seriously,” Gaspard said in an altered tone, “I did not know you were so ignorant of the facts here. American reticence is distressingly like the English; they suffer so over their love affairs – and make apologies after – they make love, then to apologize when finished!”
The mess waiter went out hurriedly.
“What do you mean?” David said. “Talking that way before that man!”
“You look as though you would crack me with a bullet! I apologize to you, mon vieux, though I think you have ample justification. Life has been full or danger, has it not? But I am sorry I spoke as I did. I see it is each m
an’s affair, which he keeps to himself in the American manner. But if I did so myself, it would make like an ulcer within me.”
David wondered, ‘Could Gaspard’s carrying voice be heard through the closed door? Was that mess man behind it, listening?’
“Since I have so clumsily touched upon the subject,” Gaspard said, “I should like to give you all,” but he looked directly at David, “the benefit of my experience. Do not forget these girls realize there are not enough men in general and officers in particular to go around. Thus, there is more reason than ever for jealousy. That is the source of the greatest difficulty. That is the reason the moralists are so eloquent upon the theme of one woman, but only one. They are moralists; therefore, they cannot reveal the real reason – jealousy. Do not forget how these girls of the provinces are exactly like those in Paris with better pairs of – ah – silk stockings. But their legs are the same. Their jealousy is the same. If one woman suspects there is another, then she will use all her ingenuity to discover her rival’s identity. And then! If they meet, if a skirmish begins, your whole battalion could not break off the fight …”
“Gaspard, you old fool,” David interrupted, “you needn’t pretend you’re talking to me. If this is your idea of a joke, it’s time now to admit you’ve been telling some very tall stories.”
Gaspard grinned, held up his hands in the familiar gesture of surrender and said, “Yes, but naturally!”
But it did not escape David that Gaspard made this acknowledgment in a whisper. The damage, as far as the mess waiter was concerned, had been done. What the officers of the mess thought was of no outside consequence; they would hold their tongues. But that mess man … Suddenly, David saw an unpleasant scenario of subsequent events. The waiter would be the connecting file between the cook and the rest of the battalion. By the end of the week, Gaspard’s scandalous conceits, amplified, ornamented, would be in verse form, sung by the chantey men of the four companies. And the growing saga of his moral derelictions could not fail to pleasantly shock the civilian moralists sent over to prevent and correct just this sort of thing among our vulnerable servicemen.
CHAPTER 7
Revolt against Reality
“You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful
to make the world a tolerable place to live in
is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity.
You demand unselfishness from others,
which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours.
Why should they?
When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world
you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you,
and you will look upon them more charitably.
Men seek but one thing in life – their pleasure.”
~ W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage”
Bomb crater after a German Zeppelin raid, Paris, 1917,
Anne Janney had grown up on a horse farm in the genteel hills outside Waterford, Virginia, a place of rolling green pastures, well-tended woods, a conservative pride of family and history, country clubs, gin and tonics, fox hunts and institutionalized racism. She was to the manor born, so to speak. Yet, there was a radical democracy in her outlook, a color-blind, egalitarian rage against the accepted; she treated the groom the same as the mayor.
She had met Alan when he and David were students at the University of Virginia. Anne was spending a rather boring summer with her maiden aunt in Charlottesville. Meeting at a local watering-hole, she first encountered Alan when he sauntered up to her and asked, “Can I buy you a drink or do you just want the cash?” ‘So bold, this one! So amusing, charming and handsome,’ she thought. From then on, she was hooked – and accepted the cash.
David knew he would have to see Anne while still in Paris; he didn’t know how much longer he would be there, or she either. It was his obligation to Alan, or so he thought.
The taxi took him to Hôtel du Jeu de Paume on Rue Saint-Louis. It was nicely located on Île Saint-Louis, between the Seine and le Quartier Latin, and close to le Marais. The taxi driver, who was a guide par excellence, told him the hotel was a rehabilitation of a former royal tennis court built under Louis XIII at the beginning of the 17th century.
He paid the driver and entered the grand lobby. The hotel was certainly elegant and impressive, he noted. The massive, tall wooden frame overhung the breakfast room with guest rooms situated all around. He took a deep breath and the elevator to Anne’s room. He tried to control his nerves – “breathe, breathe,” he thought. It had been a long time since they last met – in happier times at home.
Anne was expecting him. When she opened the door, he could see she had been crying.
“David! Thank you so much for calling and coming to see me. I really do appreciate it. With the great news of the armistice, I was so excited. I was expecting him back anytime. But then …” she sobbed.
David put an arm around her as if to provide some feeble comfort, he knew. His nervousness had been replaced with a deep sadness. Yet, he noted his surroundings. The room was mansard-roofed in the bohemian spirit and with a large fireplace.
“Alan’s gone!” she had said.
“It was mercifully quick.”
“When?” she had whispered.
“He was shot dead right next to me last Monday at 10:59 to be precise. That’s right – one minute before Armistice! The irony of it. But it was a sudden death, no lingering pain or regrets.”
“Cruel! Cruel for him. Killed that way!”
“It’s not the end for Alan,” David had heard himself say. “Not the end, but the beginning.”
Grave eyes had looked into his in swift appraisal. He had been startled less by their vitality and color, perhaps aquamarine, than by the clear comment they conveyed. She understood his attempt to be tactful, but she knew he did not believe the old idea he had expressed. “Won’t you take that chair, David, by the fire?”
Though for an hour they had spoken entirely of Alan, more and more Anne had taken possession of David’s mind, diverting him from Alan to herself. He hoped she had been unaware of this certainty while she had seemed absorbed in his story – from time to time she had asked questions that seemed to confirm it. Yet so strong had become the attraction of this girl, David had found his mind divided. He had been speaking of Alan with only surface thought. Beneath it, he was astonished his loyalty to Alan had failed to assert itself, as if it had died with him. There seemed nothing to hold back his increasing interest in Anne, not even the thought she had belonged to Alan. And then, when David had said he had loved Alan as a brother in arms throughout all the action and thus might know something of the shock of the news to her, she had made plain her regard for him had come from long friendship, nothing more.
David wondered if he had betrayed Alan, for he had come by expression or lack of it, how startlingly his mind had leaped at this. Had she noticed his breathlessness and difficulty in talking with her for a time after that? If she had, would she put it down to the peculiar emotions of this particular day? Could she know that every move she made photographed through his eyes against perceptions so sensitive they seemed sophomoric?
Look away from her, David thought. Look away from lips too alive to watch, quick lips with neither droop nor severity, but bearing decision as well as laughter, though far from laughter now. Look away, for now she was reaching up with fingers to tuck away unruly strands of pale November sunlight about her head. He wondered if he was seeing two different women in the single gesture. Either this was habit so to flaunt the contours she made and for the moment she had forgotten it was out of place today, or she was like an ingenuous, trusting boy, forthright for unthinking.
In either case, she was strong solvent to restraint this day, when there was force to the fact he was actually alone with a woman in Par
is, in a room with walls wholly intact, with doors that closed and could be locked. So look away into the fire of coals upon her hearth, but feel warmth warmer than this fire, and chill that could be conscience at the heat of the thought, and he felt heat again, waves of it recurring like a fever or fear in the field.
‘You’re made of the elements,’ he thought. ‘Your hair is rippled wheat. Your skin is what sharp air and sun and walking in the mists can do. Your eyes are filled with color come from seeing water that’s more blue than green.’
How dared she move now to the fire and back again with such exiting swing? She dared nothing, he realized. This was one of the rediscoveries of detail come with the peace. He had forgotten how a woman walked across a room. She dared nothing. She had no suspicion that today of all days the minds of fighting men were filled with thoughts of women more intense than they had ever known, that today of all days they demanded forgetfulness of horror and reality. How could she know the only difference between men of the line who were in Paris today was the coarseness or the fineness of their natures like the differing thickness of the wire in a time bomb. That sooner or later this day a passionate acid would eat through the wire and release a plunger to blow restraint to fragments?
He felt a tide of love and hate, blood and passion that had swirled about everyone these last months, and most particularly here, or had she merely gone through the motions of living in these gracious, civilized rooms?
Had she thought about how many had been killed and how much had been destroyed? Had she ever seen a blow struck in anger? Had she any hint of what the fighting was? Did she realize the death of Alan was but the death of a single individual among ten millions of men who had been killed in battle these last four years? Had she heard perhaps there were twenty-five million more desperate men, women and children who had never touched a weapon but who had died of hunger, privation and disease from this war? Could she have imagined how both Alan and he had reverted to the bestial, out of necessity to be sure, but reverted none the less, and come down to the hand-to-hand, the fist, the foot, the knee, the tooth and nail? Had she any idea how the minds of many sane and happy men had been changed beyond recognition by those more safely placed, changed as much as wounds had changed some bodies, and how these men would batter down all resistance and take what they wanted by force? She made such slim, swelling, flowing lines he dared not note them directly or too long.