A Soldier of the Great War (82 page)

Alessandro and several hundred other prisoners—Italian, Russian, Greek, French, English, and Sudanese, some who were tall enough to see over the lake—had been delivered to the custody of the Bulgarians for the purpose of making earthworks on the Bulgarian front opposite the Greeks, French, and English.

At the end of March, the seventy sheepskin-clad Bulgarians and five hundred prisoners had set out from Klagenfurt in a cold rain, on foot, bound for Sofia. The supply train was inadequate and by May the only thing left for the 570 men was to live off the land. They made desperate zigzags into Hungary, driven by neither the compass nor the sun but by the need to reach a field where they had seen a sheep, or a barn where they thought they might find chickens.

The lake had some fish, and the farms along its length were rich. Still, they had very little to eat, because, after several thousand
years of rapacious tax collectors and alien armies, the local peasants were expert at hiding food. Starving may be more pleasant in summer than in winter, especially in tremendous heat, when it is possible to pretend that to be thin is to be cold, but it was difficult nonetheless.

Prisoners and guards alike swam in the lake, opening their eyes beneath the surface in the hope of seeing a fish. The Sudanese made round nets and tossed them mightily over the water, where they landed with a hiss, but European fish were too cagey for this technique, although now and then a fish was caught purely by accident, and thrown almost whole into a consummately dilute fish-and-potato stew.

In March and early April, with the column in striking distance of the Italian lines and the Adriatic, escape was popular. The Bulgarians did not try hard to prevent it, but when a prisoner, as often was the case, was returned after a few days' starvation in the cold rain, they grew implacably angry and shot him in the head.

Alessandro had not even thought to try. He was still recovering from his wounds, he had difficulty walking, and was covered with fresh scars that he did not wish to torment by running through the brush or diving onto rocky ground. He wondered what he looked like, for he hadn't seen a mirror for many months. When he asked others to describe him, they would say, "You have a scar that runs from your cheek to your ear." It stopped there. They could not describe his face, especially since they didn't know how he had changed. One of the Sudanese had told him, in English, that he looked like a small animal that had barely escaped a lion after being mauled in its claws, and the scars, the Sudanese said, were pink like the sunset after a dust storm.

Not far from where they camped was a church, where the Bulgarians took groups of prisoners to lie on the cool stone floor. For an hour or so they would rest on their backs, staring at a vault high above them that was tinted red and lost in the darkness, or turning
their heads to see the dazzling portraits in stained glass. In these lovely hours not even the Bulgarians spoke, not even the Sudanese, who were Muslims. Instead, they managed, by lying on their backs and moving their eyes, to float about as if they were underwater side by side with luminous saints and infants swaddled in brilliant white.

The saints and children, though fixed in glass, moved as freely as the light that shone through them. That they had in their stillness the most lively animation made Alessandro take heart. Here he heard Guariglia say, "God protect my children." The memory of his fathers hand, grasping his for the last time, made him tighten his fist in imitation. And Ariane floated in a circle of silver as fluid as the nets tossed by the Sudanese.

 

T
HE
B
ULGARIANS
ate rose petals with goat cheese, onion, olive oil, pepper, and salt. Though it was too early for berries, it was just the right time for roses, which made impenetrable barriers between sun-drenched fields, surrounded every house and barn, and grew without inhibition from the heart of broken stone walls.

The olive oil and cheese were strictly for the Bulgarians, and the captives ate their flowers unseasoned. Such a delicate flower with so subtle a scent has nonetheless a taste stronger than that of escarole, and far less pleasant, and it can make you very sick. Because the prisoners had to eat something, the Bulgarians allowed them to forage away from camp, but if they returned after dark they were shot. Two who were unfortunate enough to have thought that dusk was daylight ended their lives with bitter smiles as the other prisoners watched, and from that time forward few dared return when the sun was not still high in the sky.

Alessandro had wandered to the western side of the lake in search of something to eat. Though he was weak from starvation, he enjoyed walking alone, surrounded by fields, orchards, and blue
water. Sometimes he would throw himself down on the grass and sleep for an hour or two to cure the giddiness of hunger.

At noon he was four hours from camp and had not found anything to eat. He lay down, deciding to awaken at two or three so as to make his way back by six or seven, which was perfectly safe because the sun was in the sky until nine, but he slept and dreamed so deeply that he awakened at six. He was so disoriented that he didn't realize what had happened. As sunburnt as if he had been in a desert, he went to the lake. The water lapped against the shore in quick waves no higher than the breadth of a finger. He put his hands on two fiat rocks just under the surface, and submerged his head. After drinking his fill, he sat on the shore trying to come fully awake, and realized what he had done.

Even if he ran, and he hadn't the strength to run, he would have no guarantee of getting back to camp before dusk. He would make his way through a thousand kilometers of enemy territory and reach the Serbs, or he would proceed more directly to the Adriatic, either of which would be a remarkable accomplishment. He began to walk toward Italy.

After twenty minutes of walking with the sun in his eyes he came to a wave in the prairie, and at the crest a group of six Bulgarian horsemen appeared.

The leader, a familiar guard, told Alessandro that he was going in the wrong direction.

"Oh," Alessandro said.

"Even if you went in the right direction, you'd get to camp too late," the leader said, pulling a service pistol from his holster and aiming at Alessandro's head.

"If you give me a ride, I'll get to camp on time."

"If I don't, you won't, and I'll have to shoot you."

"That's true, but if you do you won't have to shoot me."

"I'm going to have to shoot you, because I wasn't going to give you a ride."

"You weren't going to shoot me, either, so you'll have to give me a ride."

As they galloped down the road they turned away from the lake, and Alessandro asked why they weren't proceeding directly to camp.

"There may be food in this direction," the horseman shouted over the wind.

"What if we don't get back in time?"

"You know exactly."

"Are you going to take that into consideration?"

"No."

The carbine on the back of the horseman nearly hit Alessandro's face each time the horse took a step. If Alessandro yanked it and slid off the back of the horse, he would take one Bulgarian down and have the rifle for the other five. If he could do it fast enough at an advantageous moment, near cover, he might succeed. Then again, they might get back to camp on time, and cover was scarce.

As he struggled with this question the sun did not slow in its descent, but he never had to decide one way or another, for they veered toward a peasant farm in a grove of small trees off the road.

A young farmer came from his house, took a few steps forward, and greeted them as if he knew that they had come to steal his food.

"Where's your food?" one of the Bulgarians asked straight out.

"Have none."

"You're lying. You're not thin enough not to be lying."

"I'm heavy boned."

"Shoot the bastard," the leader said.

The farmer was shocked. These were friendly troops. He hadn't understood that the leader wasn't serious, but neither had one of the horsemen, who, as the others were laughing, lifted his rifle and shot the farmer through the head.

A woman rushed from inside and bent over her husband. Her screams were not only pathetic but, unfortunately for her, very ugly and frightening. The man who had killed her husband lifted his rifle again. Alessandro felt as if time had stopped, and his distress was immeasurable as the woman was quickly knocked over with two shots.

A child, a little girl of about three, walked quickly through the doorway and started toward her parents.

Alessandro had no time to see what would happen. Perhaps they would shoot the child, and perhaps not, but if Alessandro had not moved before he knew the outcome, he would have been too late. He didn't want to do it, because he was sure that if he did they would kill him, but even as he tried to hold himself in check his hand seized the carbine and he pulled the Bulgarian from the horse, choking him with the sling. The horse reared, the Bulgarian had the wind knocked out of him, and in the confusion Alessandro had time to get a round in the chamber and let off a shot that slammed into the foreleg of a horse.

Trying to control their mounts, the Bulgarians were unable to reach their weapons, and as the horses bucked, went rampant, sidled, and bumped, a shooting gallery appeared before Alessandro.

Slewing the carbine, he fired and knocked one of the Bulgarians forever off his horse. He took a half step forward and fired again, but the chance movement of a horse deprived the bullet of its target.

Two Bulgarians had dismounted and were running toward Alessandro, one with a sword and the other with a bayonet. He dropped one, but as he did he was knocked down by the one he had pulled from the saddle. The swordsman kicked the carbine from his hands, pivoted around, and went for the child.

Alessandro crawled in her direction as he was beaten by rifle butts and the hooves of disturbed horses. Through the chestnut-colored legs and risen dust, he saw the swordsman approach the little girl and raise the sword above his head. The child was impas
sive. She had dark little eyes, like raisins, and a bowl-shaped haircut. Only her eyes moved as the sword was raised, and then it came down, faster than the eye could see.

Alessandro closed his eyes, thinking that they would kill him immediately. He was wrong.

They left him on the ground while they calmed the horses, about whom they were genuinely upset, and attended to their dead and wounded. The wounded man rested against a small tree, apparently not too badly hurt, and the dead man looked like a rolled-up rug.

Two Bulgarians went inside the house and came out with several wooden cages. "What's in the cages?" the wounded man called out, thinking that if the cages held rabbits or chickens the wound would have been worthwhile. The cages held four big rats.

The Bulgarians looted everything they could. They pulled quilts and blankets from a huge pine chest and scattered them in the dust. They took the farmer's clothes and his wife's jewelry. A photograph of the child was tossed to the ground, and landed face down.

As the horses calmed and the Bulgarians stared at the rats, trying to decide whether or not to eat them, Alessandro was told to dig two graves. One was shallow, the other deep.

Many thoughts raced through Alessandro's mind, and when the Bulgarians lowered the pine chest into the earth, he assumed it was going to be a coffin for their friend, but then they buried their friend in the other grave.

Since the Bulgarians evinced no interest in the family they had murdered, and didn't even look their way, Alessandro concluded that they had prepared it for him, but it didn't make sense that the Bulgarian would be buried in raw earth and Alessandro given a coffin.

Then he saw one of his captors coming from the house, with a hammer and a handful of homemade nails. Alessandro looked at the Bulgarians, who were laughing, and he looked at the rats. Then he bolted.

It was almost dark. He tore through some brambles, running as fast as he could. Though he was clearing a path for the Bulgarians, they were going slower, as their reward for getting through the brambles was so much less than his.

Alessandro thought he might escape if the darkness would protect him, and he ran until long after the Bulgarians' few rifle shots had stopped. After an hour he threw himself deep into the brush and stayed absolutely still. He listened all through the night, and he heard only the sound of nightingales and a stream.

 

A
T DUSK
the next day, after wandering through the heat-filled plain without having had a single bite to eat, he came to a small hill upon which a profusion of flowers was blooming untouched, uneaten, and in colors as rich as the panels of saints and swaddled infants that he had left to the Bulgarians and Sudanese. As he was eating, he thought he saw a soldier, but the man standing stock still behind a clump of foxglove was dressed in red pants the color of poppies, a royal-blue jacket with white trim, and a golden helmet. He was festooned so with buttons, braids, and colorful bars, and his boots and mustache were so black and so heavily waxed that Alessandro assumed he was either a hallucination or a toy.

"Remarkable thing about foxglove," the hallucination said, in German. "They stay colorful for months after they're cut. It's because they're poison that they last. I had some on my estate and we cut them to make way for a tennis court. Three months later I knocked a ball over the fence, and when I went to get it I saw the foxglove stacked in a huge pile, with gnats buzzing above it in a beam of light, and its colors had not faded."

Alessandro addressed this vision. "Where is your estate?" he asked in faltering German.

"Just outside Vienna."

"I didn't realize," Alessandro said, continuing to graze upon flower petals, "that German was the language of my subconscious."

"German is the language of my subconscious," the hallucination replied.

"Don't you speak Italian?" Alessandro asked, looking up at him.

"Yes, certainly. Would you prefer to speak Italian?"