Peace

by Richard Bausch

  “Nothing for me in Jew York, there, Asch.”

  “On the curbside on Broadway, darling.”

  “Yeah, that’s me all right, in that town. I’d have to stay drunk all the time.”

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea, how about you kiss my ass?”

  Like Marson, Joyner had been a star athlete in high school—right guard on the football team, forward on the basketball team. He played baseball, too, but wasn’t as good at it, nor as interested in it. Marson had been so good at baseball that he played semipro for a couple of years. He had been around. He was the oldest man in the squad, two years older than Sergeant Glick. Joyner was only nineteen. He and Marson had come through training together. They were assigned to the division when it was still in Sicily, following the invasion there. Saul Asch had seen action in North Africa and he talked about a dream he kept having from a memory: a burning tank, the men in it, and the heat of the desert, the smell rising in the waves of black smoke and flames. He dreamed the smell, he said, and his tone was matter-of-fact, as though he were reporting some curiosity of the terrain. The dream did not appear to affect him. He was just twenty-three years old, with round little brown eyes and chubby boy’s cheeks, the eldest of three brothers, all of whom were serving. He had barely made the height requirement. Marson had found him pleasurable to be around because of the way he had of turning everything into an observation, and there was the Boston accent. But he had lately been wanting to avoid him because of his talk about the recurring dream. It kept happening. “Had it again,” he would say. “Same thing. The heat and the smell. Like I’m there again.” He would shake his head and shrug. “You figure?” That was a phrase he used repeatedly to express puzzlement or wonder. He was Jewish, but, as he put it, never practiced. His grandfather was a German Jew who in his late thirties fought for the Kaiser in World War I. That always amazed him to think about. The grandfather had died last year in the living room of an apartment in Brockton, after eating a meal of salmon in dill sauce with his daughter-in-law, who had cooked the meal and came from Italy. That man had been in the other war, the first one, fighting on the other side. Asch talked about going from the Ardennes Forest, shooting at French and English and American soldiers, to a living room in Brockton—with a grandson about to join the army to go fight the Hun. It was ridiculous.

  Marson possessed a strong sense of paradox, and he had liked this story. But he had been having trouble being around Asch: he would think of it, and of the Africa nightmare, every time Asch spoke. It was like backdrop. And now they had the woman’s death between them, too.

  Marson couldn’t imagine Asch living long enough to be a grandfather. Probably it was the rounded cheeks, so boylike, so chubby and smooth. Marson couldn’t look at him without thinking that the war would certainly kill him. But then, often he did not, himself, expect to survive it.

  SEVEN

  IT WAS ALMOST FULL DARK NOW. The cold was a dead immensity on them. It was as though they were moving through a film of ice, always climbing, weighted down by web belt and pack, and the bandoliers and grenades, slipping, fighting for air, following the old man, who seemed to have grown younger as the distance between him and the road increased. He climbed easily, and his breathing seemed effortless. Marson watched him, his own lungs burning, his legs trembling with the effort not to fall. The climb kept getting steeper, and he could hear his own heart pounding in his ears. He gagged, and then gagged again, climbing. Each step scraped the blister on his heel, and several times he had to use the stock of his rifle like a cane, the palm of his hand over the barrel opening, to support himself. Asch and Joyner were silent, and they made no eye contact, automatically thrusting themselves up with each step, using a tree branch now and then to pull on. They came up, oblivious to anything but the slant of the ground where they were putting their boots—the rough angling upward of the earth with its rucks and broken branches and gouges of mud and leaf meal—and Marson kept looking back at them, checking their progress. It was too dark now to see where they were heading or where the hill might begin to crest or level off. There was just the endless climbing, pain deepening in the muscles of their legs and in their knees, the bones there. Because the ground was so steep, there didn’t seem to be a way to rest without beginning the long slide back down. And all the while there was the unabating, remorseless, utter constancy of the rain.

  The old man went on up, the incline so steep now that with each step that knee was close to his chest, the bony hand pushing on it, to gain the next increment of ground. Asch fell again and slid far enough to be out of sight. Joyner sat down and put the butt of his rifle against the ground between his feet, his field jacket sleeve across the barrel. He reached in under the sleeve and scratched the place on his forearm. Marson called softly to the old man. “Wait.”

  “Sì.”

  The old man held on to the thin trunk of a tree, and Marson climbed to him, then turned. They could hear Asch struggling toward them from where he had fallen.

  “Che città in America?” the old man said. “City you live?”

  “Washington, D.C.,” Marson said.

  “I see Washington.”

  “Yeah?”

  Silence. Just the clink of equipment on the belts, the rain beating their bodies and the helmets. Above them, the sky was inconsistently covering a full moon—there were thin places in it—but the rain kept beating down. The old man wiped the water from his chin and coughed. Then he bent a little at his knees, reached into his burlap trousers, and pulled out his prick. In the dimness, Marson saw the uncircumcised length of it. The old man urinated onto the soggy leaves at his feet. The urine steamed, running in thin tributaries away from him. He tucked himself back in and, looking at Marson, nodded slightly, with an embarrassed little smile.

  “When did you see Washington?” Marson asked him.

  After a hesitation, the old man nodded. “Younger. I travel. Sono andato a New York. I—I go to New York, too. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Marson told him. “I’ve never been.”

  The old man seemed mystified.

  “No me,” Marson said. “New York.”

  “Ah, sì.”

  “What is your name?”

  Again the look.

  “How are you called?”

  The old man nodded. “Yes. Sì.”

  Marson pointed to himself. “Robert.”

  “Sì. Angelo.”

  “Angelo.”

  “Were you ever in the army, Angelo?”

  “Come?”

  Marson pointed to himself, his helmet with the water dripping from it. “Army. Military.”

  “Oh, sì. Nella prima guerra.”

  “Prima. One. World War I.”

  “Sì.”

  “Did you fight?”

  The old man stared.

  “Fight.” Marson gestured, pantomimed shooting.

  “Sì. Ero un capitano.”

  Marson saluted him. “Captain, sì?”

  The old man, Angelo, nodded. He had a hopeful expression on his face now. Water dripped from the creases of his hood and gathered at his chest, the large fold there. The rain got in. It ran searchingly down Marson’s neck and into his blouse. He shivered. Asch made it to them, and finally they all headed up again, reaching for crevices and low branches because it was too steep to stand. The ground kept sliding beneath them, and the icy rain kept pelting their faces.

  At last they came to a small area of level ground, and Marson said, “We’ll rest here a little.”

  Angelo looked at him.

  “Rest?” Marson said again.

  “Sì.”

  Asch and Joyner were already pulling their packs off. They set them down and, with their rifles across their thighs, squatted against an outcropping of rock, a ledge that channeled the rain away from them, down the mountain. It was a mountain. Marson realized that now. The old man moved to the ledge, to Asch’s left. Marson joined him there. They were all four huddled in the lee of the rock, and the water ran on away
from them, though Marson’s knees were still exposed. He took his blanket roll and opened it and held it over himself.

  “Fuck,” Asch said. “When I get out of this, I’m gonna live in the desert, I swear to Christ. I’m gonna move to Arizona. And if it rains there I’m moving. I’m gonna be somewhere in the sun.” He sounded as though he might start shrieking.

  “Keep it down,” Marson told him. He almost choked on the words. The muscles of his abdomen contracted. He swallowed and took a slow breath. They were all quiet, hearing the noise of the rain that kept coming and coming.

  “I’m telling you it’s the end of the fucking world,” Joyner said. “The world never had to deal with so much general destruction. How do we know we won’t knock it right off its orbit into space?”

  “Jesus, Ben. I got enough morbid shit running around in my head without worrying about that, too.”

  “Don’t call me Ben. It’s Benny.”

  “Sorry there, Joyner.”

  “Christ,” Joyner said. “I never even got married.” He put his hand in under his sleeve and scratched again.

  “Wonder if my wife’s had her baby,” said Asch. Then, after clearing his throat: “I don’t think a woman should die because she’s got blood loyalty to a lover.” He cleared his throat again, and bowed his head and spit. “Christ’s sake.”

  “Saint Saul,” Joyner said. “Maybe you didn’t notice she was trying to claw my fuck’n eyes out.”

  “I noticed. I notice everything, buddy.”

  “Is that some kind of threat?”

  “Shut up,” Corporal Marson said. “Both of you.”

  Joyner turned to him. “You think anybody else is out in this shit, Marson?”

  “If they are, and they’re Jerries, they’ll have weapons, too,” Marson told him. “So shut it.”

  “I’m shivering so bad,” Asch muttered. “I’ve got cramps from the shivering. I hit my back on a sapling, sliding down the fucking hill.”

  “It’s not a hill,” Joyner said, scratching. “It’s a fuck’n mountain.”

  “Mountain, sì,” said the old man. “Montagna.”

  “This is bullshit, is what this is.”

  “Shut up,” Corporal Marson said. “All of you.”

  They were quiet again. He looked out at the faintly glistening tree and branch shapes in the dark and listened to the rain, its amazing monotonous drumming. He closed his eyes and saw again the softly curved dirty legs of the woman jutting from the tall drenched grass and the Kraut with his dying green eyes, such a dark shade of green, and the red hair matted to the white forehead. That look of pure wonder. Something like a thrill went through him, horrible, and then inexpressible, gone, a feather’s touch in his soul, like something reaching for him from the bottom of hell. He looked at the others there with him in the raining dark and was afraid for them, not thinking of himself at all, and it was as if he had already died, and saw them from some other plane of existence.

  “Avete da mangiare?” the old man murmured. “Eat? Food.”

  Marson opened a tin of C rations and handed it to him. He ate greedily, with his fingers, as if wanting to get it down before it could be taken away from him.

  The others ate, too, in silence. Marson could not do it. He smoked a cigarette and watched them, and then turned his head away. After a time, they were all trying to fall asleep. Marson closed his eyes again and almost immediately fell into a fitful slumber. He saw the old man sneak away into the mist that surrounded them, and then he was trying to stir himself. He heard breathing, voices murmuring, somebody said a name, or cursed, or commanded, and there was motion again and he couldn’t break the spell, couldn’t make the muscles of his arms or legs move. He was crying out now, in his dream, trying to get them to wake him. Wake me up! he was shouting, and then he did stir, into a quiet, a stillness that brought him nearly to his feet, rifle held up, and he looked into the dark, and something moved. But there wasn’t any movement and the only sound was the unceasing rain. He looked over and saw that the old man had curled up into his cloak and gone to sleep. The other two were also asleep, Asch with his helmet almost off and his fat cheeks twitching. Asch was probably dreaming of Africa again. “No,” he said once, loud. And then again: “No.”

  EIGHT

  ROBERT MARSON HAD ARRIVED in Palermo on a troopship after the initial fighting there was over. And there had been some delays about further orders. In the area of the war in which he found himself, nobody seemed to know what to do with anybody. Many of them, it was rumored, would be part of an enormous operation somewhere along the coast of France. Others would go to the Italian mainland. They were all training and drilling for amphibious landings. Marson’s unit was quartered in a row of pup tents on the outskirts of the city. The Tyrrhenian Sea was visible from their little strip of land. Out in the waters of the harbor there were minesweepers. But it was a peaceful, quiet scene. The idleness made everyone edgy. General Patton didn’t want anybody getting too comfortable, or taking it too easy, and so they were performing drills through the early morning hours. But there were delays in deployment, and for a few days they had a kind of vacation. When there was any kind of break, they went into the city and to the beaches nearby and swam in the chilly water and sunned themselves on the sand. They felt an urgency about it all because they knew the war was waiting for them. In the lucid water of the sea, in the brightness and calm of the beach, it was difficult to believe in the war. Marson saw the Palatine Chapel and walked to a Norman castle with several other men.

  In a little café off a square, within sight of a mosque, he drank several beers and then two bottles of wine with Saul Asch while Asch talked about his grandfather, the Kaiser’s soldier. And about his parents, who were devout, and from whom he had kept the secret of his growing skepticism. “Sometimes,” he said, “lies are better than truth. Trust me.” Finally he began talking about his wife. A sweet woman. Fifteen years older than he. A teacher who had lived next door all through his growing up. “That’s me, buddy. I married the lady next door. A widow, no less. You know how her husband died? Slipped in the bath. No kidding. Fell over and conked his head and that was that. He’d served us iced tea the afternoon it happened. Singing in the shower and the next minute: dead. It doesn’t only take war, you know? I knew the guy, too. Nice guy. A little dull. Didn’t talk much.”

  “Asch,” Marson said. “You’re the most morbid son of a bitch in this army.”

  “We’re all in the crosshairs,” Asch said. “That’s all I know.”

  Marson told him about his wife and child. He wanted to try imagining himself to be somewhere after the war, wanted to place himself years away from it in his mind. He carried his wife’s letters with him and the little cracked photo of the girl. His wife’s name was Helen Louise. The baby’s name was Barbara. He had not seen combat yet and he was afraid. He did not want to die or be wounded, of course, but he also feared that he would turn and run when the time came. These others all seemed so certain they would survive, and there were moments in the nights when he believed he would turn and run. He had read the Crane novel about the civil war, and Crane’s conclusion—that his fictional soldier had seen the great death and it was, after all, only death—seemed utterly false to him, dangerously, stupidly romantic. He looked at Asch with these thoughts running in his mind and said the names of his wife and daughter, feeling the cold rising at the back of his head, the electric change in the nerves of his spine whenever he received the sense that he would not live to see his daughter or to look upon Helen’s face again.

  “Nice names,” Asch said. “My wife’s name is Clara. Sweet lady. When I’m thirty she’ll be forty-five.”

  Marson looked at him.

  “You figure?”

  “It’s more strange if you go the other way. How old was she when you were ten?” He was just talking to keep it all at bay, now.

  “Yeah. Jesus,” Asch said.

  “A little boy.”

  “When I’m forty-five, she’l
l be sixty.”

  “We’ve got the arithmetic down,” Marson said.

  “You figure?”

  “Fifteen years isn’t really so much, is it?”

  “Nothing to it, no. Just a thought, you know.”

  A dark boy came to the table, with a long thin face, beetle brows, a wide mouth, and a leonine shock of black hair. “This wine you’re drinking is gutter water,” he said, in clear unaccented English.

  They were surprised. Marson smiled at him and the boy stared.

  “You have a gap in your teeth.”

  Marson nodded, a little confused.

  The boy pulled the skin of his wide mouth back, revealing that he had a missing front tooth. “We’re meant to be friends, signore,” he said, and introduced himself.

  His name was Mario and he was from Messina. He had come to Palermo with his father and brother a year ago, and he knew where all the good wine was hidden. He went on to say that he could speak English so well because he had spent a summer in New York back when he was eight. He had spoken nothing but English that entire summer.

  “New York,” Asch said, “That’s a big city. I’m from Boston.”

  “I confess I don’t like Boston,” the boy said. “The Dodgers play there.”

  “No, that’s Brooklyn. Boston is the Red Sox.”

  “The hated Red Sox.”

  “My team,” said Asch.

  “I’m fucked to hear it. I am devoted to the New York Yankees.”

  “I hate the Yankees,” Asch said. “And I hate everybody that likes them.”

  Mario smiled, showing the wide gap in his teeth. “Then we are sworn enemies, signore.” At fifteen, he had yet to begin growing whiskers. He was lean, long limbed, and his hair was so black it showed blue. He told them he had lost his tooth from getting pistol-whipped by a German soldier in Messina. The soldier hit him just for being dark skinned, swiping carelessly across his face with the barrel of the pistol. The boy described this with a smile as if it was all a very stupid joke. The soldier had been shot the next morning from the air by a strafing American plane that had a long-fanged mouth painted on the fuselage. Plenty of teeth in that mouth. Ten soldiers had died in the square from the one pass the plane made, and everybody was sure now that the Germans were through. “I will get you some good wine,” he said. “The best wine. Primitivo.”