by Earle Looker
David looked out the window, but his desire for her, rapacious enough he thought, to deserve some future punishment of circumstance for it, blurred the masses of the outlook as dusk crept over the ancient town. For the moment, he dared not reply, but stood in the embrasure gripping the sill as if he would cling to it to hold himself from a misadventure of regret.
“You were in such a tearing hurry,” she said, “to shove my luggage in here, I suspect your room is the better of the two!”
“There’s a key in the lock of your door, that’s why,” David said harshly.
“Oh!”
“You should have had enough experience to know this is about the last moment you’ll have to lock it.”
“I say! Fair enough.”
The silence seemed it never would end.
Finally, she said, “Can you see the bend of the canal below around the tower – from your window?”
The question was not irrelevant to the main issue; it brought David straightway to it. It was almost too obvious, to make it seem more natural for her to step across the hall, to answer the question herself, to bring her into his room, with dark eyes pretending to regard him casually and to come to the window beside him. It enabled her to look out, yet to stand closer as if unconsciously, to be sure of his breathlessness, to hear his heart pounding. It gave her opportunity to raise her hand to the nape of her neck in the same sort of gesture he remembered, with a sharp sense of infidelity, of Celeste. It brought Rose where she might turn to look into his face and, finding there what she expected, to bring her hands slowly down upon his shoulders with a naturalness.
Rose stood by the window. ‘In this peaceful, quiet, ancient place,’ Rose thought, ‘this man on the bed, through a sequence of events I would have thought impossible, was slowly recovering from a kind of battlefield experience I would have thought horrific had this town not been so beautiful. Not probable,’ she thought again, ‘yet not impossible; nothing was impossible here. Everything had happened; it could happen again. Albert gone! Now, David –here!’
The evening’s last light framed her in soft yellows like a Vermeer painting. Dominating all, so close it seemed she could almost reach out and touch it across the shimmering canal, higher than even the famous Belfry, rose the gold flecked bricks of the tower of Notre Dame. Vast, calm, she thought it the greatest thing in Bruges, to be seen, she knew, for miles about the Flemish plain and leagues out to sea. All she viewed from the window represented an attempt, she thought, to achieve some sort of happiness, all this weight of brick and stone and thickness of wall. These were not houses as she had known them back in England. They rose, she reflected, as another sort of stronghold.
Dusk was creeping over the town now, dulling stones trodden by men whose greatness had come down through the ages, and felt the shortness of centuries in the real span of time. She remembered, when she had first stood and looked up at Van Dyke’s “Crucifixions”, stood close by an altarpiece set there by Michael Angelo, set in cold walls, the armorial bearings of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, who had prayed there themselves in full state and armor a generation before Spain heard of a new world across the sea.
Rose had the look and the language, David now thought from the bed. She seemed artistic, sentimental. She seemed to understand a thing or two – but she was a cheat – ‘pretending reserve to raise my passions. She’s just a whore at heart,’ he thought, but then immediately wondered why he thought that.
Rose had no desire to be confessor, nor to see beyond this room when the door had been barred.
“You must be one of the Virtuous Girls.”
“Yes, perhaps I am,” Rose said to quiet him.
David sighed, “Any Virtuous Girl is safe enough with me now. But don’t laugh!”
Rose said nothing, but lifted her head and turned the pillow.
“You won’t laugh?” David insisted.
“I won’t laugh,” she promised.
“That’s good,” he said, and thought this, at least, was something later for the notepad.
The assurance of her touch seemed possessive, yet what was left of his conscience waited for her to take all that remained of responsibility. This girl, he thought, knew what she was about with the pressure of each separate finger.
Blood rushed; he felt flushed. She passionately unbuttoned his trousers to release his arousal. David unbuttoned her blouse to discover she was not wearing a brassiere. Firm and perfect, her breasts invited him. They continued this way until all clothing was unnecessary. David lay her gently on the bed. It was not David, but Albert; not Rose but Celeste, who continued their love making.
They embraced for two hours, lost track of time, and in the end returned to themselves. Feeling spent but satisfied, David was alone once again – an orgasm is after all, when all is said and done, a space only self can occupy.
David sighed, “Have you ever felt nostalgic for some happy event that hasn’t finished yet? It’s a sort of melancholy madness. I tell you; it just ruins the moment. I don’t want this moment to end, holding you in my arms, yet I know it must. Can’t we go on like this forever? Is this just another happy fiction?”
“Rose …,” he began, thinking this was probably the first time he had actually spoken her name, but immediately her warm fingers brushed across his face to cover his lips.
3
There had been moments in the field, David thought, when the tide of action developed so swiftly and with such overpowering strength a command is swept beyond its objective and across into an area made more hazardous. It was often there, he remembered, when men became aware of their position they were touched by a sort of passionate madness that actuates incredible gallantry, unbelievable savagery, as well as the most unforeseen gestures of gentleness, sympathy and even gayety. They had come to that same place here, just now – above Savatier’s shops, he thought, with a mutual appreciation of how they had been swept into it.
“Don’t you feel as I do, David, that our minds, too …?”
“Let it go.”
“I’m trying to tell you something.”
“Oh, well then.”
“David! What’s wrong? Really, we’ve demolished the obstacles to understanding between us. You’re thinking about the old rules? Who makes our rules? Not the Padre, not his old stuff. That’s what we were telling him. The old rules are no go; they pretty nearly did for us. We’ve earned the right to make our own new rules, haven’t we? We can behave as we jolly well please to help each other …”
“But, Rose, is this …”
“Is this necessary, you mean? I’m still trying to tell you something! Will you believe me? There’s nothing left but truth now. I must give you something in return for what you’ve given me.”
“But you have, if you want to come right out and say …”
“I mean much more than that! Look at me, David! I know something about you. No one worries so much over the things you argued with the Padre, for himself alone. I ought to know.” She seemed suddenly to be dissatisfied with his lack of response. He wondered why she seemed so anxious to persuade. “David, I know! You must have been very deeply in love.”
“Rose! Don’t.”
“David, I know. I lost most of my happiness, too, just – like that!” She snapped her fingers. “When he was killed. Just as you …”
“But Rose …”
“David, I know something of what you’ve been through. Don’t you see? The same thing happened to me. He was killed too.”
David felt hysterical laughter in his throat. She thought Celeste was dead! Not Celeste, of course, he began to reason, but the girl he loved. How had Rose known he was in love? Why had Rose thought she was dead? Even the idea took his breath away, made him speechless; there was a blank. “My dear. Oh my dear,” he remembered Anne had said. Celeste gone? Impossible! But, again, death seemed to be in the air, making
it close, oppressive, stifling. Always death seemed present, just out of sight. It was felt again and again and again, mentioned as often, never to be forgotten. Who had told Rose that Celeste was dead? Who, even, could have told her of Celeste? Fear had him by the throat now. “Oh, God,” he heard himself murmur, “Oh, God.”
“He was a marvelous surgeon,” Rose was saying. “Albert was afraid, just as all of us were, but he never let his hand tremble. And so – now I’ve been unfaithful to him, David, just as you to her. Please listen! I’ve always been faithful to him in everything. In thought. Faithful to him! Faithful to what? Faithful to a whiff of gunpowder in the air, David? Or faithful to nothing but Albert’s body in a bloody muck hole somewhere in the Somme. We suffered the greatest number of casualties in a single day in the history of the British Army. But what madness to be faithful to that! Some women can be faithful to a memory, but they haven’t seen what’s what. And what happens to a woman who remains faithful that way, and then finds another man who loves her? As, David, I hope I shall. What happens? I think it’s plain enough. She’s unfaithful to the first when she goes into the arms of the second. Perhaps some woman wouldn’t mind that, but I would. I’d never forget what I’d done. What chance of real happiness? Am I right or wrong? Is it only an idea? Isn’t it all an idea anyway? Isn’t it enough to think it dangerous, if not terrible, to build happiness, if I ever found it, upon an infidelity? Wouldn’t just the idea make it so? Why that’s almost a man’s idea, isn’t it? What do you think? How much better to have been unfaithful before with someone you do not love. Smash it that way, that first infidelity. Done for! Just as it’s done for now in me … Same thing, David, with you, I should think.”
David heard his voice, cold as in a court martial, say, “I think I understand your idea, yes, but look here. Why did you think I’d lost her?”
“But you have, haven’t you?”
“Why did you think so?”
“But, David!”
It was a cry, he felt come from her heart. It rang too true, dismay mingled with indignation at his continued reticence, to be other than honest. In some way incomprehensible to reason, a curiously mistaken intuition more than a flash of second sight, which he now realized had been the suspicion chilling his heart earlier. She had concluded he had suffered the same sort of loss as her own. The idea, however, still seemed to paralyze his power to deny it.
“See here,” he said, “I want all the truth about you, right out like a good, obedient soldier, and you talk to me like a man.”
“My word! So you don’t think me feminine?”
“Plenty! But you do not understand men …”
“Rude remark, halt the …”
“‘Rude remark, halt the column,’ you were going to say. Don’t think I never heard that story. And not so long ago you said ‘Stand fast!’ You said, ‘straight-forward soldierly ideas.’ You said, ‘Mark one for you.’ … Rose, I’m not mistaken; you’re no civilian; show me your ribbons …”
He looked into her dark eyes, thinking there were fires there, very deep down. Her lips smiled but her eyes did not seem to follow. “But you’ve seen my ribbons, David!”
“You’re trying to turn the column with a vulgarity – not natural for you, Rose. Look here, they dropped eggs on you in London. Why have you hidden your service from me? You should be proud of it; of course you are.”
“David, please don’t bring it back! Take me in your arms again. I need to forget.”
His next question died. He knew now why she had hidden her service. He was suddenly ashamed he had pressed her so hard. He had been slow to understand and could not bring himself to say further, ‘You were at a Base Hospital.’ He was more than aware of that now. ‘So you were a nurse!’ however spoken, might contain a suggestion of sarcasm inconsiderate of basic decencies to which he was sure they both still subscribed. He remembered there was an attitude toward the nursing service that marked the field soldier as clearly as a wound stripe. He had often thought how fine it was, despite the frailty of a few of these women, the false tales, the supposed opportunities. They were honored by a gratitude and a rough chivalry that kept them safe under almost any circumstance. Nurse! Sister! Then, she might have seen the worst of war by far and have more right than even himself to what satisfaction there might be in physical release.
David’s mind went blank again, seeking rest. Strange, now, his lack of conscience, allowing him to appreciate – that she had stored up her passion so long it could not be quickly extinguished. Fair enough, he thought, echoing her decision when he had given her the chance to think better of it. Might not all women really be alike? Could not any man thus reduce one after the other whatever the salient difference? Could not Celeste’s differences with him, her curious convent ideas, her quaint religious fantasies, be subdued the more quickly because he could make her feel, beyond all of them, the part they were taking with the forces of an invisible tide of the cycle of death and life peculiar to the cycle of the moment?
Suddenly, it came down to this question: Could not even one of her own passionate young Frenchmen, some veteran using the two field lessons he knew best – deception and force – take Celeste unaware, sweep her off her feet before she had time to reason, as Gaspard had feared in the beginning? Was this again his demand for more experience? For haste? Had not Gaspard started to explain such a fear? David remembered he had refused to listen when Gaspard talked about mistresses.
Rose said: “Why so restless?”
“I must leave you.” He thought, ‘Four blocks to the telegraph office.’
“Not now.”
“Yes.”
“You must not go! Why?”
“I’ve – I’ve just thought of something – you like black coffee, a cigarette, a liqueur in the evening. I can get them in a few minutes. Why not?” He thought, ‘I can get them on the way back.’
“Thoughtful. In fact, you’re really a dear. Really! You mean you’d actually go out in this horrid drizzle to get them?”
“Wouldn’t it help?”
“Rather!”
“Take twenty minutes, perhaps.” He thought confidently, ‘That’ll give me enough time.’
“Oh, not that long. There’s a café on Rue de la Digue.”
“That’s right. I’d forgotten,” he said and then thought, ‘I’ll explain when I return that I argued ten minutes over the deposit for the pot and the cup.’
4
A light burned dimly in the post-telegraph bureau as David wrote the message: “Celeste I would come to you across a thousand trenches, and even a sea would be nothing between us. I could not live unless I knew you were waiting for me.”
He held the pencil a long time. His mind, he thought, was stagnant. He could find nothing else to say though there was nothing else about which to say anything. He looked down at what he had written and was sharply aware the ideas had been slipped into his head like a cartridge clip into a rifle magazine. Not even the words were his, but Gaspard’s. Gaspard had him moving like a puppet, speaking like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
‘Gaspard, stage manager, actor, oratorical egotist, caricature of a type, voice of experience, and always with a touch of the Grand Guignol, strutting about so confident of his wisdom and ability, thinking himself a kind of god,’ David recalled. ‘Why, goddamn him, he was! But for what? For Celeste, yes, but certainly not only for the reason he had described or those which I had myself so far imagined. For all those reasons, but also for what was undisclosed, basic reason warranted this strategy extending to “donner du soulagement to those impulses I seem to have so long repressed? Again,’ David wondered, ‘was it so that Gaspard might say, “I have decided you are not fit for her?”’
He crumpled the message into a wad. It seemed wiser, after all, not to send it. But never would he forget the circumstance that dictated it. In his own estimation, such an action would leave him stri
pped of all decency.
“I have changed my mind,” he said to the telegraph clerk.
“Monsieur?”
“I have changed my mind … J’ai changé d’avis.”
The repetition went further than he intended. ‘I have changed my mind. Indecision,’ he thought, ‘was like a caress leading to another meaning. I have changed my mind. Perhaps I have changed my mind about more than this. Perhaps,’ he reflected, ‘I never thought things through.’
Perhaps he had not understood until the last few hours what war had really done to him. Perhaps he had not clearly seen the vast difference between his veteran ideas and those of all civilians. Perhaps he had not realized the width of the wire separating him from those who had not seen reality as he had, strands at the same time that zigzagged about a hundred details of daily life. Perhaps he had not considered how Celeste was a realist only in terms of a sheltered place, and her religious ideas confirmed that, and of another race. Perhaps the greater wisdom, if not also the greater love, despite the desire and the promises, might lie in avoiding the misunderstandings and bitterness that could hardly fail to arise and wreck the happiness of such a spirit as Celeste’s. Perhaps the only hope for happiness for such as himself might be in finding some woman who thought as he did, because she had been through a similar experience of disillusionment, fear, anguish and could build upon the same foundation, of fragments left of it, as his own.
He knew now what he needed most was continued confirmation, in the ideas of another, of the reality he saw himself. Else he was too willing to find hidden and supernatural purpose in details merely because they happened to be vividly remembered and in synchrony that actually revealed no more than a certain cadence to action. This realization, alone, was enough to destroy the mystery in Rose’s idea of Celeste’s supposed death. Rose had simply overheard his conversation with Beaumont at the beginning.
Now he saw Rose’s action with more clarity and in its entirety. She had been touched by her misunderstanding that both their loves had gone. She had understood the real urgency of his questioning Beaumont and shared his anger at the vicar’s inflexible, stupid, meaningless responses, for she too had the veteran’s view of reality. She had seen the smoldering desire consuming him, had known its causes and had herself been fired by it into a forceful, exuberant passion. In her naïve philosophy, she could relieve him, as well as herself, of the disadvantages of fidelity. She had shown herself to be a warmly compassionate woman as well as a clearly intelligent mind working out a solution as satisfactory to herself as he judged he would have found had he really been in the position she supposed. She had thought with a degree of realism that ascribed to him the proportions of a new kind of integrity needed in this newly changed world. He realized to tell her the truth about himself now would be to destroy what she thought she had accomplished for him. Perhaps scarred as they were, here might well be a hope of something lasting. Something lasting!