An Acceptable Warrior

by Earle Looker

  “What we want is a new philosophy, but how I hate that word!”

  “Can’t dodge it, David.”

  “Salvage!” David said suddenly. “That’s what it might be called. Like salvage in a truck yard. What we’ve got to do is search through the whole dump, salvage out a piece here and a piece there; see if we’ve enough to assemble a truck that’ll run.”

  “I want to be sure we’ve convictions that’ll make us take the same road, David. I want convictions that’ll make us important in some greater scheme of things as once we thought we were. We must find proof we’re wrong, dead wrong, in most of what we thought before: that we can’t help ourselves; that we’re not accomplishing anything; that we’re not going anywhere.”

  “You have no idea how much I love you right now!” David said. “You’re everything. I don’t deserve to know you.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want you to make love to me – not now. When my head’s stronger, again, than my heart. Perhaps I’ve shown my feelings too much. But I’ve known you for so long. I expect a great deal of you. Strange to talk to you this way. Not today. Today, most of our ideas fell out, like the front of a building that’s been shelled, exposing the inside. Our experience has brought us to this. We want to clean up this mess, but we can’t rebuild until we know how to make it strong, to keep it from collapsing again. In a war, the women have more time to think. Thoughts, too, peculiar to ourselves, but …”

  Anne averted her face.

  “Finish it,” David insisted. “Finish what you started to say.”

  “But we’re no use to each other unless we’re completely frank.”

  She looked at him with that same grave scrutiny he had experienced so soon after they met.

  “Yes, it has to be said.” The blood rushed across her face. “Women think of children, David, more than you may know especially now. Children to conceive and carry and bear and love and bring up right, but for what? For the same cruelties we’ve seen? Perhaps worse? I’ve said it now; the rest is easier. We don’t seem to have any gods left, David. Dare we pretend we’re gods ourselves – go ahead and create – and start the chain of events, from birth to death for those of ours to follow? Are we willing to take that responsibility? Isn’t that something to think about? Just now! But from what I’ve seen, it’s terrifying. Unless …”

  “You want convictions and ideas. The kind of ideas we can use and they can use, to rise above whatever hits them so they can take it – the kind of ideas we’re looking for right now.”

  “Yes, David, as impossible as that may seem!”

  “New conclusions, new convictions,” he said as though to himself. “When there’s nothing new, only the old. We must try now to think, or we never will,” David said. “What can there be in your experience or mine that proves true! How can we dig it out? But how to begin?”

  “Begin with the facts, David. Begin as if you were putting them down, arranging them before you began to think about what they meant. At first let’s not even try to understand what they mean. Perhaps we never will; maybe we might; but, first, the facts. Begin with your own experience. Begin anywhere. Begin yesterday and go back. You begin and presently I’ll add my part. Begin by telling me what happened just after Alan’s death.”

  His steel-shod boot stamped upon the hearth so hard, she thought, its shock must be felt down to the concierge four floors below. “Ok, until then, we ride – tomorrow.”

  4

  Snow had been falling gently all morning; a rare occurrence this early for Paris. The whiteness covered the city, the streets, the monuments, with a uniform blanket, making indistinguishable one object from another in its universality of indifference and beauty.

  “Anne! How are you getting on? Are you well, feeling better?” David asked.

  “Yes, David, I’m feeling much better now, thank you. The doctor has given me some pills to calm me down, to comfort me and help me sleep. Seems to be working.” But in fact, she was thinking, ‘Time goes by so slowly,’ musing on the wreckage of her life, so in need of some lasting comfort and a confirmation of hope, a reason to go on with this burden.

  “Shall we still go riding in spite of this snow?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, it’s beautiful. It will be especially so in the Bois. And for tomorrow – any plans? It’s Sunday,” Anne asked.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Gaspard’s invited us both to lunch tomorrow – at the Ledoyen Pavillon on Champs Elysees. It’s considered one of Paris’ best gourmet restaurants and with a long tradition. Paris dining at its best perhaps. During the late 18th century, it was a haunt of Louis de Saint-Just and Robespierre; they dined there just two days before their executions. Napoleon and Joséphine met there, and it was a favorite of artists and writers such as Marat, Degas, Monet, Zola, Flaubert, I think. I can pick you up around eleven. Then, after lunch, we can ride again in the Bois. Sound like a plan?”

  “Yes!”

  “Anne, what Gaspard thought was important, after all,” David said, “had bearing on what we did. Why we left as we did. Of course, I don’t know exactly what he thought, really – then or later. How could I ever?! But I’ve made a try at it.”

  ‘Not now, no more,’ David thought, when Gaspard had made him speechless by filling his mind with cynical, lying lines to say to her, too obviously lines from a play of foreign authorship: ‘This was inevitable! This is fate!’

  “We’ll be having lunch with him tomorrow. Perhaps you can ask him then.” Anne said.

  5

  “Thanks again to your old Gaspard for the dejeuner at Ledoyen yesterday. It was really very special. Such a place! I will remember it forever,” Anne said sitting in Gaspard’s hotel room on Avenue Victor Hugo.

  “Oh, not to me?” David asked, teasing.

  “No, not to you, David – the little salad and the vol-au-vent – magnifique! But I was in desperate need of some wine,” she said.

  David grinned. “I admit all I told the maître d’ was just something not too heavy and coffee, no chicory ersatz. He smiled like a fool and said to just leave it to him.”

  “That’s why I said, ‘Thanks to your Gaspard’. I think the maître d’ remembered his menu for some lady the last time he was on leave in Paris. Your Gaspard’s an old devil; women’s names for his trenches, arranging his rooms, too, so they’re attractive to women.”

  ‘But these rooms,’ David observed, ‘were the opposite of attractive.’ To begin with, the place was bare. Doubtless, Gaspard had packed his trophies away before he turned the key in the lock and went off to war. This sitting room was as devoid of personality as a club room, yet as comfortable with its huge deep red leather couch and all the massive chairs to match. A square table of walnut with twin student lamps, in one of which David had found some oil, had been used as a desk, if the ink spots upon its surface were evidence. David had opened the door of the high cupboard that stood against the wall; it contained files. There were no pictures on the walls, only framed documents that appeared to be political testimonials of some sort.

  “He certainly is a funny old character. If this room doesn’t say something about Gaspard’s women …” she said.

  David objected.

  “But, it’s just the kind of a room a woman likes because there’re no reminders in it of other women. It smells deliciously of leather and tobacco. It’s what’s not here and what could be done with it that’s most interesting. And look at the space! I’m lying full length on this couch with a yard to spare beyond the toes of my boots.”

  “You’re testing my endurance, Anne!”

  “Well, I hope your Gaspard can work wonders and get you out of the mess you’ve got yourself into,” she said. “Perhaps he can even get Sarazin himself to work those wonders.”

  “Sarah – zeen?”

  “Sarazin, David. He’s a most important man at the Ministry of War.”

>   “Good! Then Gaspard’s got the influence he says. I can tell you I ‘m glad of it now! But how do you know this – Sarazin?”

  “I don’t. But he’s come to the hospital to pin on decorations. He’s a horrible old goat of a general; he looks like a vulture. Hardly worth the medal to be kissed by that! He often rides in the Bois – one of the reasons I never ride without the groom behind me. I can ride comfortably, and nobody speaks.”

  Had he forgotten what they were trying to do? Had they arrived at any conclusions so far? Not that she expected any great convictions to leap up as they talked, but didn’t the lack of ideas suggest they were letting themselves drift away from their agreement? So far, he admitted, he saw no more than he’d seen just after the armistice, except that Alan had started a chain of events they had only begun to glimpse.

  She said it was not only Alan’s death that had started a sequence. Alan had revolted against reality even in peacetime. She was more and more aware of David’s likeness to Alan – and disturbed by it – even that similar accent. Especially now, when the whole world, instead of taking on a new beauty because they had met, appeared darker – proof beyond doubt of the dangers. But, what dangers? She did not know exactly, really, but felt them more sharply because inherent in David’s understanding of reality, and her’s too, was a revolt against it.

  Something Alan had done, evidently, placed doubt in Anne’s mind, something David said not without bitterness, with regard to himself. This wasn’t straight thinking, wasn’t like her. He believed her when she said she hadn’t really been in love with Alan, but never was there so strange an opponent, introducing them and then mocking them, as evanescent as a ghost, as difficult to deal with as a memory. Weren’t they making it hard enough for themselves by trying to – come to conclusions apart from the main one that they were made for each other? Could they hope to come to any of these conclusions without love?

  So far, he admitted, he saw no more than he’d seen just after the armistice, except that Alan had started a chain of events they had only begun to glimpse. This damned talk was now beyond endurance.

  His kiss, she gasped, breathless and struggling, was taken by force and was bitter, and she hated him for it. He had come entirely too close to breaking his word.

  “You forget you’ve told me you’ve known me well – from the letters. We can’t just make love, David – or what goes for it – the way old Gaspard does. You want more than the feel of it and so do I. But since we’ve spoken as we have, and you’ve told me of the urgency of all nature to replace what’s been destroyed, I’ll tell you now this urgency touches me as much as it does you. Certainly, a cycle is turning; we seem to be part of it. But don’t make it harder, David, for me to resist.”

  “Maybe we think we’re so wise we’re foolish?” he said.

  “You mean I am?” She thought, ‘Should I tell him? How? I must!’

  He responded that she was exquisite and compassionate and had a brain, even as Alan had said. He could tell her now what he had first thought: she was wheat and sun, warmth and light, sea and mist, and her eyes. ‘Well, let it go,’ he thought.

  “David,” she trembled, still not sure she should tell him her secret. “I must tell you. I am pregnant – with Alan’s child.”

  “What? How? When? How long? Did Alan know?”

  “I was going to tell him when he came back. Now, I just really don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  6

  The knock on the door was discreet, David thought, so discreet, indeed, that he felt the blood surge across his face again. Discreet and considerate, for there was a pause before it was repeated with but slightly more insistence.

  Anne understood, but she was instantly poised.

  “Come in!” David called.

  “It is I,” the deep voice said.

  “Come in,” David repeated.

  “It is I - Gaspard. Me voici.”

  David strode to the door and opened it suddenly, realizing it had been locked.

  Gaspard was disclosed upon the threshold, grinning like the old Billy goat he was and pulling the ends of his moustache. “Mademoiselle!” he said to Anne. “This is as great a pleasure as it is unexpected!”

  Anne smiled. “Then you are not pleased. You knew you’d find us here, Colonel.”

  “On ne m’y reprendra plus! I won’t be caught again!”

  He laughed and threw himself into one of the deep leather chairs. “How beautiful this poor place has become,” he murmured.

  “Mademoiselle, the ride in the Bois was pleasant – yes?”

  “Especially when we galloped and jumped,” she said. “The forest was beautiful, and we had a lovely time by the lake at the Pavillon de la Grande Cascade.”

  Gaspard gnawed at his moustache. “So? But is this not November and too bleak?”

  “Well, the woods are waiting for Spring,” Anne said.

  “Ah!” Gaspard concentrated a look upon her, David thought, like a torch beam in a dugout.

  “Ah!” he repeated.

  “I know for long time that a place is as disagreeable or as agreeable as your companion in it. Is that not so, Mademoiselle?”

  Anne laughed. “You should not flatter David before me!”

  Gaspard switched off the light of his observation as though he knew all he wished and was pleased. He sighed.

  “Mademoiselle, you take my mind off my troubles, even now.”

  “What troubles?” David asked. “What’s happened?”

  “The trouble is that now, mon vieux, nothing has happened. I had counted upon this old fool Sarazin to open doors to me. He cannot even do that!”

  “But surely your other friends at the Ministry …”

  “Those Ministers?! Name of a name! Rien! Nothing! It takes the time. Three days would only be a beginning of an assault upon that labyrinth. Mon dieu! Ce Ministére! It is as difficult of entry as if there were barriers and bombers at every gallery twist of an underground fortification. My difficulty is that my friends there are persons of too much importance now. These friends so call them! They have erected defenses about themselves so they may work and plan – protected from their friends. It is the terrible logic that reasons every detail. Everyone wishes to see them, to propose this plan or that. Themselves, they wish to see no one but those they wish to see; they list only those they wish to see. It is from inside out, not from outside in. There is no way to reach them except from above – so high above that I am unknown. I send messages to my friends. Each time, my message is intercepted by a jackass appointed for the purpose of intercepting messages. Then, in a little quarter of an hour my note returns with the endorsement, ‘M. le general X has gone to Amiens, Y to Madagascar’ … or ‘the military secretary to M. le general,’ signing in purple ink like a love letter, ‘is desolated that M. le colonel Gaspard, le commandant Gaspard, le capitaine Gaspard’ – phutt! – by this time, I am but a louse in the seam of a sleeve!”

  “But you reached Sarazin by telephone?” David said,

  “Yes, I tried … So why didn’t you, Daveed?” Gaspard snorted. “That Sarazin answers the telephone because it makes him feel important. The others do not; they have assistants to do that, to make excuses.”

  “Why couldn’t Sazarin open the doors to you?”

  Gaspard’s forehead became blue with congestion.

  “Non! I admit a mistake, beginning with him. Not long ago, his star was bright. But now, he no longer has the influence. His word in our favor now would be so much poison. The talk now is that he establishes, definitely, the wrong thing to do and keeps his appointment because he is thus infallible. You ask me what I did. I stand for an hour, a senior colonel of the line, waiting for some friend to emerge. How do they leave the building? At every other back door …”

  Anne said: “Have you lived so long among men, Colonel, that you’ve forgotten wome
n can be useful?”

  Gaspard froze; David saw he was in the Gallic calm of real excitement. At last he cried, “I am tête dure! He rose, took a turn about the room, his bear’s paws behind his back, his beard thrust out as he tilted his head. David had seen him thus as he planned an attack through the upper reaches of the woods toward Sedan. He returned, looked searchingly down at Anne. “Daveed has told you? My fortifications? Our absence without leave?”

  “Yes, of course …”

  “Mademoiselle! You must go with me to this Ministry – if for no other reason than you wish to get this long piece of American mud out of trouble?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No!!!” David said, suddenly cold. “Mix Anne in this mess of ours? Certainly not! However you mean, it’s our …”

  Gaspard now waved his arms violently. “If she were only ravishingly beautiful – which she is – and had no ideas at all – which she has – she would still be the best help to us at the moment. How? Merely having her with us. She will startle, stir, thaw their cold official attitude into warm courtesy. They will remember the war is over, and they again can be human. We will be ushered in wherever we may wish to go. Who could halt us with this support? We will cut through their barricades as if they were butter, walking easily as if following a tank, though that is not the most apt description. If we …”

  “She’s not going!” David interrupted curtly.

  “But, name of God! It cannot harm; it might succeed, mon vieux. It is the only way. Here is the situation. First, we must break through their defenses. Then, we must capture enough interest in my plans to warrant protection in high quarters from the crime we have committed in coming to Paris in order to present these plans …”

  Anne interrupted: “Colonel, you have not thought, in your plan of action, enough about David.”

  “Je pense lui, I am thinking about him!”

  “You had every reason to come to Paris,” Anne said. “But David had no such reasons. I can’t help you, of course, unless you find reasons as good as yours for David.”