by Earle Looker
“You’re a damned annoyance to me,” the General said, “but you’re a good type. (Gaspard, David thought must have said, ‘Mon general, the boy is a good type! Mon general, can you not be tolerant? Mon general, do you not, perhaps, remember certain incidents in your own youth – yes?’). So I have decided to give you a chance to get out of this mess you’ve made for yourself. You’ve got to make a clean break. You understand? And then if I hear of anything but exemplary conduct I’ll have you transferred to some duty, like Graves Registration. That’ll keep you in France until you’re ninety. To make this break sharp and immediate, you’ll put in for leave now. When you return, the Division will have moved to another area.” The General looked extremely magnanimous.
David looked at him with amazement. He was beginning to understand Gaspard’s strategy. Gaspard had created a situation in order to present a solution the General would accept. Gaspard was forcing him to go on leave. Or else, Gaspard helped him to get leave in the only way, under the peculiar disciplinary conditions, it could be secured.
“Leave!” David said. “Leave, sir?”
“Yes, I said leave. Are you deaf? Fourteen days. Not because I have any interest in you enjoying yourself, but because I want you to get out of this area. (‘To get you away,’ David thought.) A number of places are prohibited, among them Paris and San Sebastian. Now where’ll you go?”
To go on leave! All at once David knew how greatly he desired it, how necessary it had become if he were to forget his obsession with these maudlin dead-letters and continual reminders of death, if he were not to turn these accusations, in desperation, into fact. Where to go? If it could not be Paris, David thought, where else was there to go? Where could he regain something of the strength drained from him during the fighting? The moment rest was possible he felt his weakness. Where was there nothing to remind him of war? Now he was more than ever aware there had been swift terrible glimpses and cries that had been frozen within his memory by fear during the action, incidents that only now were beginning to thaw, almost to putrefy.
He had not until now felt the full horror and disgust. He had taken these in his stride, stepped over them, but now the purpose of action had gone from him, and he was thinking more and more of them. Where could he get perspective upon what he had done, upon the effect of the past on the present and imagine what might be the future? It came to him that already he had made such a decision and filed it away, the result of some conversation, some enthusiastic comment he had heard of the quiet and peace, the mellow light and shade of a place.
“Major Atwood! I’ll not wait all day. You’ll decide, or I’ll decide for you,” the General said.
“If I’m to be given leave, sir,” David said slowly, feeling the decision come up to his consciousness, “and can’t remain in Paris, the place I want to go to is in Belgium, sir … Bruges … a town under military control. It’s almost on the Channel, sir …”
“I know where Bruges is. Is there any reason why you shouldn’t go to a regular leave area?” the General asked.
“Well – yes, sir …” David began but halted.
“Why?”
“Well, sir, troops. I’d like to get away from troops.”
“You must have other reasons.”
“Yes sir, as a newspaperman …”
“As a newspaperman?!” the General interrupted. “You’re interested in a place I happen to know is called Bruges-la-Morte, the ‘City of the Dead’? Queer place for you to go, don’t you think?”
“Not at all sir,” David said, feeling cold, for it was Alan who had first so enthusiastically told him about Bruges.
“There is some friend there you wish particularly to see?” the General asked with an evident appreciation of his penetrative understanding.
David felt he might as well humor him and replied, “Yes sir” and could almost see the neat working of the General’s mind: ‘(1) if it’s another woman, she’d (2) keep him from getting into trouble, so probable in a regular leave area and perhaps (3) return him chastened.’
“This friend,” the General said abruptly. “What is the color of her eyes?”
He thought of Celeste. “Blue, aquamarine – sir!”
The General gave him a look that had in it much of the quality David had noted in the glance of the mess man; their blood circulated in the same manner.
“That’ll do, Major” the General said. “You may go now.”
PART 3
BRUGES FURLOUGH
“Bruges was his dead wife. And his dead wife was Bruges.
The two were united in a like destiny.
It was Bruges-la-Morte,
the dead town entombed in its stone quais,
with the arteries of its canals cold
once the great pulse of the sea had ceased beating in them.”
~ Georges Rodenbach, The Bells of Bruges (1892)
“The widower reviewed his past in a sunless light,
which was intensified by the greyness of the November twilight,
whilst the bells subtly impregnated the surrounding atmosphere
with the melody of sounds that faded like the ashes of dead years.”
~ Georges Rodenbach, Bruges-La-Morte (1892)
CHAPTER 10
Street of the Virtuous Laughing Girls
“. . . Yea! by your works are ye justified – toil unrelieved;
Manifold labours, co-ordinate each to the sending achieved;
Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremitting, unfeigned;
Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known, faced, and disdained;
Courage that suns only foolhardiness; even by these, are ye worthy of your guns. . .”
~ Gilbert Frankau, “The Voice of the Guns”, 1916
A street in old Bruges by Sydney Long, 1913
Now that he had finally got his seat on the train that would take him to Bruges, David’s fatigue closed about him so he could see no more than the inevitable question at the end of the journey, the question that had been asked so many times these past months. And now, here, with disillusioned eyes, he looked out upon another muddied railway platform, another cluster of slatternly rooftops slick in the dismal rain. At how many such stations had he descended when the long train of boxcars came to a grinding flat-wheeled halt at the “destination to be unknown to troops”? “So this,” murmurs from one wagon to the next, “is Paris?” A laugh, an oath, the thud of heels upon cinders, the flinging down of packs, their cursing adjustment to a new place. The battalion forms by squads, platoons, companies. David blows his whistle, bawls “Baa-tal-yohn A-ten-shohn!” then repeated along the line “Com-pa-nee ‘tschun!” Finally, David’s “Squaads Riite!” the shrilling whistle, line changing to column, the battalion marching off again like four brown caterpillars head to tail while some plaintive voice David tried not to hear asks, “Where, fer t’love av’Kreeist, do we go from here?”
David asked himself this question now at the Bruges railway station, though it was no muddy village and had no troops, but one English soldier, on the platform under the train-shed. He slung the strap of his musette bag over his shoulder, climbed down from the carriage and joined the procession through the gate.
“Beggin’ y’pardon sir,” an English sergeant enquired, “Hammerican arfficers requested t’register with t’A.P.M. sir, that middle door, Sir.”
“Thanks,” David said shortly, turning toward it.
He found himself standing before a deal table the back of which, in a swivel chair, sat a British officer whom David regarded with a sudden startled intensity. It was not that the man was as pink and as huge as David’s old Sergeant-Major, or that his drooping moustache touched a bulldog chin, but the whole left side of his tunic seemed to be covered with rows of colorful ribbons. The man must be some famous soldier. The red of his Legion d’Honneur bore a rosette, his C
roix de Guerre a silver palm; he also wore the American D.S.C. beside other ribbons David failed to recognize. Impressive. David saluted smartly despite their disparagement in rank, for this officer wore only the two pips of a first lieutenant.
“Well m’lad,” the Englishman said, addressing David with expected condescension, “let’s be on the saife side, shall we? Let’s see your paipers?”
David was even more surprised; the man talked almost the sooty Cockney of the stage. David understood how here was a non-commissioned-officer who had risen in spite of his humble origins.
“Orders proper,” the Provost said. “Now sign the book, ‘ere … You’re on leave – ‘ere and ‘ere – if I may say so Major or not, you’ve got to taike your leave.” The hard face softened, an eyelid quivered for a fraction of a second in what might have been a wink, “Unless you manage to get pawst me, eh? You came ‘ere direct? Sure? No stopping off? You could ‘ave, ‘ad y’known I was ‘ere. No, you did not. Now you’ve signed I’ll wire your naime and rank to your ‘eadquarters reporting you ‘ave arrived. Likewise, I do the saime when you go. And you report t’ me ‘fore you go. Got it?”
“Right,” David said.
“I’m also billeting. I’ve a list. You must billet on the list – regelation, ‘tis. And I know ‘bout billets.” He chuckled. “I say, you’d like a good billet? ‘Ow d’y’like ‘em now?”
David heard an undertone he did not like. “I like ‘em large and roomy,” he said mildly.
The Provost laughed. “Fawncy that now! From the look o’ you I’d said you liked ‘em tall but not too broad – just a armful, we’d say.”
“That’s enough of that!” David said sharply. He remembered something his grandfather in Virginia liked to say. Gramps, when encountering a difficult person and the futility of arguing, would remind himself, ‘Every man is entitled to his opinion. But don’t try and reason with an idiot. Is a farmer going to tell his pig its breath smells like shit? And it may seem like a real fine idea, Davie, to get down in the mud and muck with that pig, but in the end you will be humiliated, covered in mud, muck and whatnot – and the pig just loves it!’
“Beggin’ yer pardon, maite. No offense!” the Provost said, laughing again. “That was a bit of a joke y’know.”
“Was it?”
“Sure. I’m a rough one, maike no mistaike,” the Provost said, straightening his tunic but pointing to his ribbons. “I may be a ruddy Provost, but I’m still ‘uman.”
David warmed to him. “You’re the first human Provost I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t get you in trouble.”
“Eye? In trouble?” He fingered his ribbons. David understood it would take a court of Field Marshals to convict against as many medals. The Provost stroked his moustache and looked closely at David’s ribbons. “‘Pears we’ve got a couple of the saime,” he said, looking pleased. “Y’must be a lad of spirit. ‘Igh spirits and fourteen days leave. Now I’m responsible for what ‘appens ‘ere. Keep it quiet I says. ‘Ow to do it? Pick the right one at t’ beginnin’, that’s it, and don’t go changin’ from one t’nother. Fourteen days; not long to get acquainted, isn’t it?”
David remembered, “You will resist the temptation, and I will pray for you.”
David looked squarely at the Provost. Despite the implications, David could not keep from grinning. “Look here, old-timer,” he said. “Thanks for trying to help out, but as one soldier to another I’m not looking for a gal, I’ve got one …”
“My word! ‘Ere?”
“No, not here. Paris if you must know.” David took out a little address book that had been Alan’s, turned the pages. “Here’s where I want to stay, the Pension Redlich-Knight. Know it? Still open?”
The Provost’s brows went up. “At’ll cost you more’n a ha’penny,” he said. “You’ll not get much, but it’s quite respectable.”
David grinned again. “How do I get to it?”
“‘Arf a mo’,” the Provost said. “You write ‘at address in the book next your naime.” He blotted it. “Now you come wi’ me; I’ll start ya down t’ street.”
The Cockney eased himself out of the swivel chair slowly, carefully, but once upon his feet he became compact, more chest than belly, walking with surprising agility, almost grace, for a man so large.
Presently the Provost halted. “‘Ere,” he said, “down t’is passage. You go down there and turn left at t’end of it. Arfter that, it’s just a few ‘ouses to the left ‘gain.” He looked at David and chuckled, “Not lookin’ for a gal then, eh?”
David disregarded that, thanked him and strode away amazed at him, wondering about the difference between gallantry and honor and remembering: ‘Can honor set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Hath honor no skill in surgery then? No. What is honor? A word. What is that word, honor? Air. A trim reckoning! - Who hath it? He that died o’Wednesday? Doth the feel it? No. It is insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it; therefore, I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon . . .’ 6
“I say!” the Provost called after David. “I forgot: if ya want t’change your billet ya ‘ave to come to me for permission.”
“Right, if I do,” David called back, annoyed.
“Few don’t,” the Provost said and laughed.
It was a full, robust, martial laugh, David thought, the sort heard in the old British rankers’ canteens from Malta to Madras, lewd also – the way a man laughs and thumps a friend who has told a ribaldry especially well. It echoed and re-echoed down the narrow passage like the resounding of five, then twenty, mocking voices. David felt he had suddenly been thrust upon a stage, for faces came to windows to look down upon him. At his right, two girls came to the window at the same time and laughed themselves. The sound of it vibrated on top of the echoes, giving the whole street warmth and vitality.
One girl said, in French, to the other: “Il va le héro conquérant!” There goes the conquering hero!
“Just an Englishman!” said the other with a contempt borne of experience.
“What noise, his boots!”
“Perhaps he will trip over his spurs.”
They laughed again.
Across the street a softer, yet more penetrating voice said, “I think he is nice. I would take him over your Armand any day.”
Again there was laughter.
From a window above, an old voice said in reproof, “He is an officer; you could not interest him one bit.”
“Is not an officer a man?”
“Non!” followed by laughter.
Across the way, shutters burst open so violently they banged against the stone walls, and a red-head with what David had thought an English complexion regarded him with unabashed directness. “I could make him speak,” she said in English, “but with just a wiggle of my little finger.”
“Or a wiggle of your little figure?” came a deep voice, the first of a man, also in English, from the opposite side of the street.
David turned but could not find the speaker; he could be behind any one of several shutters.
“You speak French?” the voice asked.
David shook his head, for he wished now to hear how far the comments might go.
“You understand Flemish?”
David shook his head again.
The talk from house to house then took more a personal turn. “Why not invite him to lodge with you?”
“He is too, er, tall.”
“He walks like a horse. See? One, two, three, four.”
“Cattle are not allowed in this street.”
“Quick! The dust pan! The brush! If he should leave some dung behind! Run quickly; be the first to get it for your garden!”
Cross comments darted back and forth now, too swift for David’s understanding, too fu
ll of allusion and unfamiliar phrases for him to catch more than the edges of it. Though he was the subject of it, and much was surely highly uncomplimentary, he was grateful for its spirit. They had put him upon an equality he had not known for a long time. They had a wit to make much out of nothing. They were thoroughly vulgar yet completely civilized.
The windows now, along the whole length of the passage, were crowded, full of repeated “Qu ‘est-ce gu ‘y a? Qu ‘est-ce gu ‘y a?” asking the cause of the disturbance, answering, improving upon the last suggestion.
“Slops!” cried another man’s irritated voice. “Slops for the foreigner!”
David wondered if the town was as medieval as that; would he have to run the gantlet of filth flung down upon him from the windows?
“Mes amis!” he shouted in French. The silence was gratifyingly immediate. “Il est agréable d’être de retour parmi vous.” It is pleasant to be back amongst you, he said attempting persuasion. “I have gone through hell to find myself here once more.” The spontaneous lie was a fortunate impulse, he thought. “Some of you can see by my uniform that I am not English but American.”
“Then, my friend, you are welcome again,” said a white polled man in a blue blouse, leaning over his sill. “It was Monsieur Hoover, your American father, who fed us.”
“I thank you,” David said, “though I’m not exactly his son.”
“A son of a what?” the first man’s voice asked.
“Soyez silencieux! Shut it!” David shouted in mock indignation. “I can’t see you, but another word out of you, and I’ll jump into your window. I’ll jump into all the widows on this street until I find you; I am a famous American window-jumper.”
David’s audience, understanding the implications, rocked with laughter, held its sides and laughed again. David felt inspired. “I should like,” he said, “to make further acquaintance of you all.”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
“I am going just a short distance around the corner, to the Pension Redlich-Knight.”
“He is rich!”
“Now I suggest some gathering at which all of us could meet. Would you like that?”