Losing Julia (21 page)

Names, endless names impaled accusingly on endless white crosses.

“I always think of the mothers,” said Julia, holding herself as though she was cold, her arms crossed in front of her. I remembered the sound of men calling for their mothers; how common it was, so that you came to expect it. Only once did I hear a man call for his father, and that was in German.

“Maybe they should bury everyone in the same cemetery,” I said. “All of them, so that people could visualize the toll. Can you imagine it, millions and millions of headstones and crosses and Stars of David in row after row, with one war right next to another?”

“No, I can’t imagine it,” she said, leaning against my shoulder.

We walked back to the car in silence.

Driving to Fort Douaumont we saw several signs posted at various angles by the roadsides warning of leftover shells and grenades. The
Zone Rouge.
When we passed two laborers loading shells into the back of a truck, Julia asked if we could stop.

“Those are live shells?” she asked, as we stood near the stack of two dozen dirty cylinders.

I nodded. The Frenchmen smiled, then carefully picked up one of the shells, held it close to my head, tapped his ear and then shook the shell back and forth. I heard the swooshing sound of liquid inside.

“It’s a gas shell,” I said, stepping back. The Frenchman gently laid the shell down on a wooden palette in the back of the truck, then turned to pick up another.

“What are they doing with them?”

“Getting rid of them.”

“Are there many left?”

“They’re all over the place. The Germans and the French together fired tens of millions of shells just here around Verdun, and some ten percent of them never detonated.”

“They‘ll be cleaned up somehow?”

“Not in our lifetimes. France doesn’t have the money or the manpower now to do much but cordon the worst battlefields off and hope the damn things rot.”

“Will they?”

“Eventually.”

“So they‘re just sitting out there in the earth?”

“Yes.”

“My God.”

At Fort Douaumont—a massive, concrete polygon embedded in the area’s highest ridge—we walked to the top and stood next to a seventy-five-millimeter gun turret. Then we slowly spun around, sweeping our eyes across the rolling hills of the Meuse Heights. The few forests were sickly looking with the tallest trees barely a decade old and huge bare patches where nothing would grow. Everywhere the landscape looked churned and unnatural. “What is that?” Julia asked, pointing to a large building under construction.

“That’s the new Ossuary.”

“Ossua… ”

“Where the unidentified remains are kept.”

She looked over at me, then walked to one edge of the battered fort and looked down.

“You’re standing atop what was considered one of the mightiest fortresses in Europe,” I said.

“It fell to the Germans?”

“For a few months. But they say it still fought for the French.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was an explosion, among the ammunition. It started a chain reaction and more than six hundred of the German occupants were killed. There was no way to bury them properly, not with the constant shelling, so the burnt bodies were simply walled up behind one of the casemates.”

“They’re still there?”

“Yes.”

“Like the shells.”

I came up next to her. “Like the shells.”

AT FORT VAUX
we traced our hands along the crumbled and pockmarked walls and watched as a Frenchman—one of the many decorated
gardiens
of Verdun’s memorials—chased three schoolboys who were climbing over the ruins aiming stick guns at each other. Another Frenchman in a wheelchair with medals pinned to his chest sold postcards while a third offered his services as a guide. “Hear the true story of Verdun,” he said in a thick accent, as he pulled at one end of his mustache with two fingers of his left hand.

We smiled politely and walked away.

In the city of Verdun we explored Vauban’s impregnable Citadel with its miles of subterranean passageways and galleries where thousands of French soldiers hid from the German guns and where, many years earlier, English prisoners rotted during the Napoleonic Wars. Then we walked down Rue Mazel and had lunch just across from where the massive Victory Memorial was under construction. In some parts of the city entire blocks remained cleared, waiting to be rebuilt. Scaffolding was everywhere.

“It’s overwhelming,” said Julia, as she spread her napkin out on her lap, “that feeling that the dead are here. Now. With us. If a person believed in ghosts… ”

“They’d be here.”

She signaled the waiter for menus, which we studied silently before ordering. “When I was in London I went to see the Cenotaph,” she said. “It’s a great big slab of concrete near Parliament; an empty tomb that was dedicated a few years ago. And there were twelve other women from all over Britain standing there staring at it, as though looking for traces of loved ones. Some of them had traveled across the country just to see it, like a pilgrimage. One woman, a mother from Kent, told me that during the Battle of the Somme she could hear the guns across the Channel, especially at night. She said they rattled the dishes in her cupboard so that her whole house made noise. She could actually lie in bed and hear what her son was going through. It was that close.”

As I ate my lunch I thought of how grateful I was that my own mother never had to hear that sound.

I DON’T FOLLOW
the news anymore. I used to, folding the newspaper just so over breakfast and muttering about the various idiots that ruled the world. But now it all seems remarkably irrelevant, like the weather in Tahiti when you’re stuck in Buffalo. I do read the obituaries each day, poring over them with the same intensity that brokers study the stock tables. I’ve noticed lately that most of those dying are considerably younger than me and to be honest, I find this a bit discouraging. Actuarially speaking, I’m on rather thin ice.

I prefer the shorter obits to the longer biographies, which can be a bit deflating for those of us who never cracked a code in the war or won a patent or forged a booming business that we’ll bequeath to our well-groomed and valedictorianed offspring. And I always study the photographs. Are they submitted by family members? In almost every case I am certain there must be a more flattering picture of George or Henry or Martha or Carol. Good Lord.

I also notice that no matter how old people are when they die, their obit photographs invariably show a man or woman smiling from the safety of middle age, that glorious high-water mark of life before everything turns to shit.

Ah yes, middle age, the smug summit of life. How arrogantly we strutted our stuff, those of us now physically bent into submission as we shuffle along the nursing home corridors, clinging to our metal IV stands. We had our three-bedroom houses and winding driveways and symmetrical hedgerows and rose gardens and barbecues and hammocks and swing sets. We had wall-to-wall carpeting and hardwood floors and chandeliers and pantries and basements and dinner every night at seven sharp with children stampeding down the stairs and dogs barking. We had cars and bicycles and flatware and silverware and dressers and desks and reading chairs and sofas and workbenches and tool chests and by God all the responsibilities at work and home and the church and our community! The sheer importance of it all! Honey, it’s the phone for you, long distance!

What is it with all that busy-ness? All that stuff? Do we secretly entertain the hope that if only we are preoccupied enough, if we but accumulate enough, the Grim Reaper will mistake us for immortals?

Maybe the best way to calculate the precise pinnacle of middle age is by raw tonnage. On Tuesday, August 12, 1959, the dear recently departed, then a perky forty-eight, was the rightful owner of 2.9 tons worth of clothes, furniture and bric-a-brac.

Then it begins, a series of sell-offs, fallbacks and setbacks that cut you at the knees; retrenchments and retreats that lead all the way to a hospital gurney.

“YOU’VE GOT GOOD
color today, Patrick,” said Sarah, standing next to me as I sat on my bed. She slowly brushed my cheek with the back of her hand.

“It’s my Irish blood. That’s why we look so healthy when we drink. Christ, I get red when I bend over to pick up a penny.”

“And you should see him when he can’t find the penny,” said Martin, sitting on the edge of his bed and searching for his slippers with his toes.

Sarah laughed. “There’s some sort of financial planner speaking in fifteen minutes in the rec room if you two are interested,” she said.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m taking it all with me.”

“And Patrick here thinks old King Tut packed light,” said Martin.

“What about you?” she asked, looking at Martin.

“What the heck, I’m not doing anything.” He pushed off the bed with a low grunt and headed toward the door.

After he left Sarah sat down on the bed next to me. “I want to ask you something,” she said.

“Anything.”

“Are men as awful as they seem or is it just me?”

“They are worse,” I said. “Far worse.”

“I just found out I’m dating—or was dating—a creep.”

I felt a sudden jolt of jealousy. “So now will you have me?” I asked, wishing she would take my offer seriously. Lately my crush on her had become so consuming that just looking at her made me wince.

She smiled and leaned against my shoulder. “Why is it so hard to find one kind, semiattractive and intelligent man?” I suppressed the urge to flail my hands in the air like a shipwreck victim trying to attract a passing plane. “It’s crazy. All of my friends are either divorced or unhappily married. You should hear the things they tell me about their spouses! It’s like everyone is just hanging in there for their kids’ sake, only the kids are wise to them.”

“The more I learn about love and marriage, the less I’m prepared to say.”

“I think I’m going through a bad period.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, so am I.”

She smiled and patted my back. “You don’t want to hear my stupid little problems.”

“Beats thinking about my stupid little problems.”

She hesitated a moment, then sighed and said, “I don’t know, I just feel like I’ve got a lot of stuff eating away at me. I bought three self-help books after work yesterday. That’s a personal record.”

“Careful with those things. When I had my bookstore I met some of the authors and let me tell you, never have I come across such a bunch of neurotics in my life.”

“That’s not encouraging.” She leaned closer to me, so that my nose was inches from her cheek. “I was reading this book last night about how I should be more accepting of myself and I thought, does that mean I should also accept the parts of myself that are anxious and self-critical too? Or am I only going to find peace by repressing the unpleasant parts?”

“Maybe peace is aiming a little high,” I said.

“Maybe I just need a good pharmacist.”

“That bad?”

She nodded, and I suddenly realized that she was one of those people who look happier than they feel, which changed my whole sense of her. Does that suddenly catch up with you, or can you go through life with all the scars on the inside?