by Earle Looker
‘And these goddamned institutions,’ he continued. ‘They’re also bound to collapse because of the accumulation under them. These people would be surprised if they knew what was really underground. In actual fact, real pits, caverns, eaves, cesspools and putrescenes are under their cities. Take Paris and the Faubourg St. Germain, still the most aristocratic, fashionable and what have you, with quiet dignified streets and great mansions of the noblesse hidden from view by their cours d’honneur, with the Boulevard Raspail not long completed – all so solid, substantial. Great stone-faced apartments with caryatids, perhaps the portraits of mistresses of architects and sculptors, with and without drapery, holding up the balconies. But underneath! When it rained, you got a strange faint whiff of bone-dust misting up through the fissures in the earth. Underneath, six million dead – six million bodies, or what was left of them – the bones of six million persons under this part of the city, nearly double the number of living Parisians, then and now.
‘The Paris catacombs of the Roman quarries under the quarters of the Rive Gauche and people of the Quartier Montparnasse above it. A hundred and thirty of you to the acre with all that brick, stone, timber, lath, plaster, shop and household goods piled on a hollow shell sometimes buttressed, sometimes not, with every now and then a part of a street caving in. Death under them and beside them. They unconsciously see more than enough of it as they go about their daily work. Take Montparnasse cemetery for one, the walls of it touching Boulevard Raspail. They cross it, not stopping at the wall but cutting through. Here, their most civilized and ugliest reminders – gaunt crosses, cold angels, portrait statuary, urns, immortelles, beaded wreaths, a bulging Parisian cemetery in the heart of the city, where all monuments of the concession temporaire are levelled every five years and covered with fresh soil for a new cemetery on the same spot unless you have a thousand francs for the trentenaire – most popular, since you know you’ll be forgotten, surely, in one generation or less – or for the concession perpetuite, and then you’ll rise up for eternity with the soil. And so, layer upon layer of them, building up and up until, with the rising of grey stone walls on either side, the streets get deeper and darker not unlike railway cuttings rushing you toward a long black tunnel.
‘I tell you,’ he continued, ‘there’s so much death about you that it headlines the shortness of your life. So short you say – so what’s the use? What’s the use of trying to change anything? What’s the use of fighting the past? We’re damned fatalists. Europe’s deadened and your best work’s done. You’ve no virility left; you’re all just young girls and weak ones at that!’
CHAPTER 11
Vicar of Bermondsey
“Do you not see how necessary
a world of pains and troubles is
to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
~ John Keats, Letters of John Keats (1848)
Canals of Bruges, 1910
‘My dear Celeste:
‘Alone here, emphasizes the difficulty in waiting. At the same time, I am building up a compression, a driving force to reduce, salient otherwise impregnable. I feel this strength from your love to such a degree I can make this confession to you of willfully allowing you to misjudge an extremely important part of our plans. Here it is, quite cold.
‘I have let you think that after my armistice article I could walk right into the office of the “Daily Mail”, hang up my hat and without further ado become a member of their staff. No, nothing like that – until now, but I have assurance now, even though I shall be required to have more than the usual perception, clarity of expression, speed, accuracy and all ‘round ability, which so far have hardly been true of me. I have done only what at home we call country newspaper work, where presentation of ideas and news is below the standard of large cities, none of it in what you would consider the larger provincial places. I did not tell you it has seemed impossible for me to jump from this beginning, over the heads of men who have risen step by step through the hardest kind of rank experience and training, to berth such as on the “Mail”. Now I feel I can and will, though from the newspaper point of view it is something even to have been a copy-boy on the “Mail”. It is the continental edition of one of the greatest newspapers, circulating not only in Paris but, now that the roads are open again through a deserted no-man’s-land, among most of the English-speaking people on the continent. If I do not succeed here, then there is the “Chicago Tribune” or the “New York Herald”, both of which have English editions for the continent. Failing these, which I do not think likely now, I am sure I can get a job as assistant to one of the American correspondents in Paris. Then I will show them.
‘I told you none of this because – well – Now I can tell you the armistice story proved to me how I had marched up a long road since my days at home – and remember I wrote that the night we met. Now I can tell you those weeks of struggle with the dead-letters and the official reports proved to me I can decently express what I want to say – when I know what it is! You will wrinkle your nose and say, “What a sentence that is!” But now I must say you have made me focus sharply on what is to be done, since it is no longer a mere wish but a necessity if you and I are to be together. And there must be no “if”. You are giving me far more than just the will but assurance and inspiration, quickening my understanding of what it is all about, showing me significance I would not otherwise have guessed.
‘Of course the picture I carry of you in my heart is lovely, but I would love you still for your mind even if your ankles were thick, if you were flat chested and your shoulders bony instead of … But we need not go into that: “the compression today is also physical, and thinking of you that way increases my longing”.
‘Continually, you make revealing comments to me, suggesting whole plans of action. In your last letter you said, in almost the military phrasing of your father (“would he have used the same endearments?”), “Soon I hope, my own Daveed (“and I am grateful for that spelling of it; I can almost feel your lips saying it”) you will be able to resume operation in your new sector.” At once I thought: “Active operations are resumed in (a) a new sector, (b) against a new enemy, (c) with new objective and (d) new methods. A–Paris, B–The Civilians, C–‘The Daily Mail’ and D–Holding and Intelligence Operations.” A soldier’s daughter will immediately see that amplification of such an order to myself very definitely leads me. It clarifies to think of (b) the enemy. Who commands it? The old men, mostly politicians. Are they intelligent? No, most of them are clever at getting themselves just ahead of the procession of opinion, so they appear to lead it. There, you see, I have opened up a whole new field. Is there a cause, any great cause, being led by the man who invented it? On this one subject alone, there are many interviews, perhaps a series of articles.
‘With Papa G “now a general”, as he keeps reminding me, he will probably be able to pull the correct strings through the Etat Major to get me released from the army in France instead of being returned to America with the troops.
‘I think of you as Alan must have thought of Anne, though she could never have been like you, with grateful appreciation of what we have been calling destiny. I can see every reason for our happiness, for how much of it is a communion of the mind, a possession of ideas in common – and, selfishly, I think I shall get the better of it. You are helping me get ready for the job. The place will be open if I can deal with its significance.
‘Of course your loveliness is an inspiration itself. You could be selfish, perverse, crack-brained, a scold, lying, ignorant, deceitful, you could speak Flemish or even guttural German, and I would still love you as much. No one could resist your eyes, your sweet lips, the way your hair curls at the nape. Stay in and lock your door. I love you. I want you here so we shall be reading the story of this place together.
‘I feel completely permeated too, for the first time, by the actuality of ancient life. It is as if those who built these soaring towers and
pointed gables, embellished facades with sculpture and pierced great walls with Gothic windows rich in tracery, set ornate niches at street corners for the Virgin and Child, as if they had laid down their tools quite recently, a matter of moments ago. I am stirred even by the names of buildings: the house of the Smyrna Consuls, the hall of the Guild of Archery of San Sebastian, the tower of the Crossbowmen of St. George and St. Denis.
‘I felt acutely selfish this afternoon. Ambling down the Rue de Graeninghae, I discovered a wrought-iron grille at the end of an impasse giving upon the swirling Roya. On one side of the stream, rising clean out of the water, is the oldest wing of the Gruthuise; on the other a walled garden with lofty trees, limes I think also, spreading their branches over the river which, to the right, disappears into the open jaw of a dark, flat archway piercing the foundations of an ancient house, once part of a palace. In the near background, immediately facing the grille, is the choir of Notre Dame, a whole grove of flying buttresses and beyond, towering aloft, its majestic steeple, I should have first seen this little forest with you.
‘So I am not trying to see and feel everything. I shall get the general lay of it so we can make real discoveries together. Thus, among other places, I am going nowhere near that tavern, Vlissinghe, its best remembered habitué being one Peter Paul Rubens, for we shall have supper there together.
‘It is not that most of this is beautiful. Even the phlegmatic municipal buildings of the last century are of comfortable old-fashioned brick that has managed to take on the curious golden stain of time. This place is not merely old, with four of the seven parish churches going back to the twelve hundreds. It is not that here are monuments to incredible labor, the tower of Notre Dame having taken a hundred years to build, with as much brick work and masonry supposed to be below as above ground; but here is a continuity of life, of which you and I are part, in which we must have just as much meaning as most, who have come and gone before us. That is the story of this place, the story I am so anxious for you to read and see with me. I love you. I wish you were here.
‘All my love, David’
2
David reflected it might be well she was not here. He was not yet ready to open his mind to her, his deep mind. If his surface thoughts were only of her loveliness, her quickness and grace, of the light against her hair, of the clouds and the blue in her eyes, then there was present a foreboding he could not dismiss. The transition from action without much thought to thought without much action was new enough for him to be acutely aware of the process of his conclusions. He was unwilling to move forward, now, without trying to foresee the result. He found himself at full halt, repeating to himself he was possessed of presentiment.
His soldier experience had taught him there was more often a catch if a situation seemed surely right at first. At the beginning of a reconnaissance, you saw what you expected. Camouflage was designed to lull suspicions. It was as if the smooth surface of the Minnewater, flowing so placidly under the arches of the bridge by the Round Tower, reflecting the grey of the stone and the green of the trees beside it, hid black depths crowded with the unknown and, therefore, the fearful.
These beautiful old buildings of Bruges looked, in the sun after rain, as if they had risen gleaming and sparkling out of the waters as the result of some magical enchantment, but as he had become more familiar with their history he realized more and more they had flowered out into carven bud and leafy tracery from the corruption of the past. He could not avoid applying the same thought to himself and Celeste, for in her he saw so much inspiration it seemed too much to have come entirely from herself, but to be a reflection of the abilities by which Anne must have developed in Alan.
David was becoming anxious because he saw he himself was following Alan so closely. It seemed he had taken action beyond what would normally be caused by the influence of even Alan’s strong personality. It seemed more like a deflection of his ideas and plan. It was more like motivation of action by a still living Alan. David had written Celeste of the continuity of life, but he had not written, and could not without confusing involvement, of his strengthening sense of the continuity of Alan with himself and of Anne with her. The idea was explicitly expressed without raising unanswerable questions and perhaps suggesting to her there might be … death in his touch? Until he could more fully reveal these thoughts to himself, dry them out in the sun, purify them of all fear, he dared not share his whole mind with her. “Men too sensitive and too serious,” Gaspard had written.
David lay back in the canvas chair on the graveled garden path, closed his eyes and tried to think of something else. There was much to remember. Had there been a fine moment in the field, some high point worth the price? But the cost could not easily be forgotten. He found himself seeing again those pictures he instinctively knew should not be thrust back into his memory without complete exposure. The two men he knew he had killed. That first man’s face, he found, had already begun to blur with time, a machine gunner in the Bois d’Euvezin, though the impression remained of deep set eyes under his bucket helmet and thin lips set straight and bloodless in the extremity of his desperation. The instant David had fired, he remembered, the man had smiled. Certainly he had expected death.
David stirred uneasily in his chair and turned his face to the sun – the warmth of it, its drawing, he thought, was one of the reasons why generations of men had thought they could be lifted up to some sort of heaven. The comfort of it against one’s face. That second boy’s face he could never forget. It had been seen so sharply and then vanished as if in the instant of an opening and closing of a camera shutter. Memory of him was more photographic than of the first, for there had been nothing afterwards by which to compare it: a face more eager – that anxious, blond hair not clipped according to the German fashion but falling over his round forehead into his eyes, the fresh glow of youth, like a girl’s, in his cheeks. He had appeared so suddenly out of the dugout, his arm over his head as if he were serving a tennis ball instead of a potato-masher grenade. David shouting to him to surrender, shouting for them to take the grenade away from him, shouting like a fool, he thought now but naturally at the time, in English. The boy instinctively gallant as an officer should be, fighting it out to the end, doing what he had been taught to do, perhaps remembering what his forebears had done. And David’s shot, aimed like pointing as he also once more less than instinctive, just as he had been taught, the boy’s look of bewilderment as the bullet knocked him back, then the swift scattering of the platoon. David realized the grenade could kill them all since it had been broken from the stick. How silly they seemed running away from the potato-masher on the ground, running with their hands up, running prisoners, while yelling “Down! Down! It’ll get you high!” Then the explosion, and the boy’s head and neck vanished, the upper part of his tunic ripped from him, his knees slowly drawing up in an apparent agony he could no longer feel.
David opened his eyes, looked about the garden and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘God, why had that happened?! Why had any of it been allowed to happen?’ he wondered. ‘Jesus, look at the sparrows, who had been spared, about the garden.’
Presently, he realized he was looking across the little pool to the clergyman, placidly smoking his pipe and reading. ‘What,’ David wondered, ‘would religion make of this obscene reality? How could religion pretend, now, there had been a loving God anywhere?’ Only once in his whole experience had he seen any indication of divinity, and he had only thought of it now. In that strange silence over the shell-churned field and bloody ditch at the instant of the armistice might it be believed there had been the hand of God gesturing for peace from the Channel to the Alps?
David saw for a moment, as if a curtain had been lifted, two kinds of men. The first had understood significance and had suffered their anguish of soul in the midst of action. Of these had been the ones who had broken. The second had thrown themselves into the detail of action, as he had, and tried to look
away from its injustice and horror. To these men, as to himself, memory most now be bringing back images of events too sharply. They must be suffering, quite as acutely as those first ones, from disbelief in everything.
The clergyman flipped a page in his book. Damn religion, David thought. It was nothing but an annoyance that befuddled his thinking like when he had childishly prayed when Donovan had brought the machine guns to bear; like when he had realized in that paralyzing moment at the wall there was no religious teaching and no philosophy of substantial promise in the face of death; like when a God of justice seemed possible only when He seemed necessary to join Alan and Anne; like when Celeste had suggested, just before their last parting, how he did not belong to the Church, and his soul was therefore in great danger.
Religion was more than an annoyance now, but he understood it was too much a part of Celeste’s life for him to disregard as inconsequential merely because he had found it so in the light of reality. He now saw how he must make no mistake estimating its importance to her and planned to deal with it to that degree. He realized how it must be vastly more than poetry and legend to her, though it was also both of these, and how the whole structure of it might give her a quiet and spacious place into which to take shelter from reality. The more sensitive she was to the happenings about her, the more closely reality pressed upon her, the more natural it seemed now she would turn to these archaic religious fictions. Perhaps the symbolism of the adoration, the states of mind induced by her faith contained a philosophic quality nearer to the truth than he might ever know. After all, sincerity was the main thing. Would it not be better to be generous, to remember her prejudices saved her anguish and to honor them for that? Were not these falsehoods in which she believed those that had given generation after generation their courage in danger, strength in adversity, humility in success, comfort in sorrow?