A Soldier of the Great War (57 page)

"It's possible."

"Let's go."

"I can't go now," Alessandro said, and he explained. When his father was well enough to go home, then he would go, in about a
week or perhaps ten days. Was Fabio willing to wait? Fabio was willing to wait. Among other things, a woman from New Zealand had begun to frequent the cafe.

"New Zealand?"

"Chisel-sharp nose, auburn hair, green eyes, and breasts as big as this." He held the menu at arms length.

"All right then," Alessandro said. "You work on her, and I'll be back. Hope for the best."

"Naturally," Fabio answered. "Intellectuals always hope for the best. It's called cynicism." Then he brought Alessandro a silver pitcher of chocolate, and some buttered bread. "On the house," he said, and he melted back into the line.

As Alessandro ate he surveyed the spacious half-empty room. Fabio stood in the middle of the group of old waiters, a towel over his arm. He looked exactly in place in his handsome waiter's jacket and cummerbund, and he also looked far out of place, for Alessandro remembered very vividly the young soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder as naturally as if it had been part of him.

 

T
HE NEXT
evening, half an hour after Alessandro left for the Hospital of San Martino, four soldiers in battle dress arrived at the house. One entered the garden from the side street and took up a position behind a tree. He put a round in the chamber of his rifle and propped the barrel on a branch, aiming at the back door. While it grew dark he waited as tensely as if the Germans were going to charge through the kitchen. Another soldier was stationed up the street. He would have a clear shot at anyone leaving the house, and he would have so long to shoot that he left his rifle slung over his shoulder and sat on a barrel, dangling his feet as if he were a child.

The other two went to both sides of the front door, drew their pistols, and pulled the bell. After five minutes they knew that no one had gone out the back and they expected one of four possibilities, all of which they had experienced repeatedly. Either the house
had been deserted to begin with, the fugitive had escaped by some hidden passage, he was cowering inside, or they would have to kill him in a fight that would range from room to room.

As one soldier kept watch on the windows, his gun pointed up and his finger on the trigger, the other picked the lock. It took twenty minutes, but then the bolt moved back as placidly as if the attorney Giuliani had used his key. They pushed open the door and peered inside. Then they rushed in, breathing hard, their eyes darting into every corner, with both hands on upraised pistols, ready to slew and fire by instinct. This they did throughout the house, never relaxing. Several of their comrades in the same detachment had eased off when most of the houses they had been searching proved empty. In each of the very last rooms—a linen closet in one case and a wine cellar in another—a suicidal deserter had been waiting behind a barricade, armed as if by the army itself.

They didn't holster their weapons even after they had gone through every room in the house and called in the other two soldiers, for they could never be sure their quarry had not eluded them and would not suddenly appear and shoot them in the back. People lost all sense of restraint when cornered in their own houses.

The four of them spread out on the lower floor after the two from outside had gone upstairs to look at Luciana's underwear strewn across her unmade bed. The sight of the rose-colored silk and the smell of perfume made them almost reel with desire. When they spotted a pair of pointed shoes that had been thrown into the corner by the same feminine presence they knew to have rumpled the sheets and dressed within the very space they now occupied, they were good for nothing for at least a minute. Then they rejoined their comrades and set up an ambush for the man they assumed to be her lover.

They refrained from smoking, because they knew that it was possible to tell from a long way off that the air in a house was full of nicotine. They settled quietly in the living room, the reception room, and on the stairs, just out of view. For a few minutes they
spoke in normal voices, but their voices quieted in proportion to the time that passed and the likelihood of Alessandro's return.

One of them broke the silence. "Do you think he'll fight?" he asked. "Do the rich ones fight?"

"Usually they don't," came the answer from the top of the stairs. "They don't know that their best chance is right here. They don't understand what's going to happen. They think everything will work out."

They heard a click. "What's that?"

"I took off my safety."

"You had it on? You stupid."

"I thought it was off."

"Shut up!"

"You shut up."

"Just be quiet," someone said, and they were. They waited, half asleep, in their scratchy green uniforms and their leather belts, with their hands on their rifles, or with pistols held across their chests.

"What if he's not here?" the soldier who was sitting in the reception room said in an inappropriately loud voice.

"He's here. Someone reported him."

"What if he went away?"

"Then we lost him," said the voice at the top of the stairs, "but don't worry, they always come home. It's why they leave in the first place."

"I don't like it."

"You could be fighting Germans, you know."

 

A
LESSANDRO KNEW
that his father was dying, but at the same time he did not know. As the old man's life proceeded to its conclusion, the signs were unmistakable. Even Luciana was aware of what was happening. Her father was amazed, sometimes frightened, and full of regret, but he was not fooled.

Alessandro, on the other hand, was able to see things that did not exist, and not to see what did. One knows when one is seeing double, but is hard pressed to state which of the two images is real. Alessandro observed his fathers increasing frailty, the painful absences in which he seemed to be ahead of himself and in another world, the subtle signs of breathing, tremor, and color, and the involuntary way his father's hand swept across the covers as if searching for something that existed in a different dimension. After years of solidity and sobriety, of wisdom, power, and control, the attorney Giuliani was now forgetful, inappropriately amused, and unaware. He left even his lovely daughter, whom he loved more than anyone or anything in the world, for uncontrolled flights in which it seemed to his children that an angel was leading him on to a place of which he was receiving larger and larger glimpses. He didn't want to go, he was scared, and sad, but the angel was winning him over in preparation for a journey into darkness, light, and infinity.

Alessandro had not known the world for even half a second without his father. Not all parents love their children above all, and often the bond between parent and child is less than their regard for strangers or principles, and only after the death of one does the other know his love, or confuse love yet again with a notion, a principle, or regret, but something had happened between Alessandro and his father early on, perhaps the way the father had embraced his boy, or spoken to him on occasions of great sadness or fear. Perhaps it had been merely love unadorned, apart from touch, reassurance, or admiration, or that in loving his children beyond measure, the attorney Giuliani had elicited their love without measure for him.

Alessandros struggles and preoccupations centered on hope and will. He could not allow his father to die. He was appropriately scientific and disciplined when conversing with De Roos, or with the specialists who appeared with the regular infrequency of trolley cars in the rain. He was alert, observant, good with his hands when
the nursing-sisters needed dexterous aid, and astoundingly strong when the attorney Giuliani had to be lifted. He was a model of decorum with the nuns, and he bent his soul to theirs so that they would be pleased to come to his fathers station. He dressed carefully, was always neat, and spent hours trying to think of something the doctors had missed. He knew how to press them subtly on equivocal points, and how to apologize without a word when he had overstepped.

It seemed appropriate that the Italian lines had collapsed, as if the attorney Giuliani and millions of soldiers were fighting the same losing war on entirely different fronts, but they weren't. The wars were different. Alessandro's still allowed for strength and will. It listened to young men and paid heed to chance and desire. His father's was the great war, less a contest than a mystery. It was gossamer, silent, and absolute. No one had been victorious in the war his father was fighting, except by faith and imagination, and of these victories no one could really be sure.

One of the soldiers had died, and his empty bed had yet to be filled. The others were barely alive. Luciana sat rigidly by her father, her face contorted into what reminded Alessandro of the expression of a soldier trying to judge the direction of hostile fire. The attorney Giuliani was sallow and gray, so that everything that was white and silver in him seemed to be bright. He was unconscious yet again, in such a seemingly delicate state that they dared not try to awaken him.

"Where have you been?" Luciana inquired of her brother. Though she had planned to be bitter and angry, she was too tired to be either.

"I went to see a specialist, but he wasn't there. He's at an army hospital in Vicenza."

"What kind of specialist?"

"Heart."

"But we already have one."

"Perhaps this one would have had greater knowledge. Which is
worse, a weak son of a bitch who lets you know he's losing the battle, or a strong son of a bitch who makes you think all the way to the end that he's winning? I don't understand how doctors dare to be so arrogant: they lose patients all the time. You'd think they'd be the most humble people in the world, and yet they walk around like generals."

"Why do generals walk around like generals?" Luciana asked. "They lose soldiers all the time. If they were businessmen they'd be bankrupt. Why is it that if you lose souls you're less accountable than if you lose money?"

"I know, Luciana," Alessandro said without looking at her. "I've seen it illustrated." He walked around the bed. "Papa?" he called, though he knew the answer would be raw breathing, now and then inexplicably interrupted by a silence that made them look up with a start even when they had been half asleep. "He's so small now. Look at him. I can't believe it. This is our father. He's as white and silver as a sunbleached reed."

"Don't say that."

"It's true. Look what he's become. I remember when he stood far above me, when his hair was jet black, when he was sunburned and strong."

"Why did he stop rowing?" Luciana asked.

"He didn't have the time. As he grew older, it was difficult for him to lift the boat, and fight currents when the river was running fast. He's so slight now that it's as if he's sublimating."

"What's sublimating?"

"When a solid becomes a gas without melting, like snow in the sunshine. It disappears right before your eyes."

One of the soldiers began to groan in his sleep. It sounded like the end. His teeth rattled like a machine. "Get a nurse," Alessandro ordered, and Luciana ran from the room.

Alessandro knelt down and put his face on his father's pillow. "Papa," he whispered in the old man's ear, "stop all this nonsense, get up, get alive again, stop dying." His father suddenly opened his
eyes, which made Alessandro almost jump backward across the room, and when the attorney Giuliani focused on his son, he looked surprisingly well rested and alert.

"Alessandro, where are we?"

"The hospital."

"What hospital?"

"San Martino."

The attorney Giuliani looked around as best he could. "When did I come here?"

"A month ago."

"A month?"

"Yes."

"What for?"

"Your heart."

"I feel as if I'm dreaming, but I'm not, am I."

"You're going to get better. Now we have the medicine that you need. Orfeo got it from the army. Your fever has gone down."

"I didn't know I had a fever."

"How do you feel?"

"I feel as if I have no body. I'm floating, and I don't like it. I'm not drunk, am I?"

"No," Alessandro said.

"I feel light, as if all I am is a pair of eyes—not even eyes, but just a point, from which I can see out. I'm not floating, am I?"

"You're in bed. You have a body." Alessandro squeezed his father's hand. "See?"

"Did they give me drugs?"

"Yes, that's probably it."

"I don't mind floating that much, but tell them to stop."

"I will. I'll tell them."

"Where's your mother?"

Alessandro bowed his head, because his eyes had filled with tears. "She's not here now," he said. "She's asleep. We've all been taking turns at your bedside. Luciana's here, and she'll be back in a minute."

"Luciana," his father said, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he asked, "Where's Luciana?"

"She's here. She went into the hall."

"I thought you were in the army, Alessandro."

"I am. I came home for a while."

"They didn't use to let you."

"I'll have to go back again, soon."

"I thought you were dead."

"Papa, I'm right here."

Luciana came in, followed by a nurse who went to the soldier, pulled a cloth partition around him, and began to do whatever she was going to do, unseen.

"He's awake," Alessandro told Luciana.

Her father called for her, and she kissed him.

"Papa is a little confused, but I told him what happened: that he's getting better, that the fever has subsided, and that he'll be able to come home."

"What time is it?" their father asked.

"It's evening, father, about nine o'clock. We're going to be here until you no longer feel that you're floating."

"You don't have to."

"We want to," Luciana answered.

"Luciana will go home now, so she can get some sleep, and I'll stay with you."

"I'll stay," Luciana volunteered.