A Soldier of the Great War (62 page)

Ludovico Indian was informed that he would be tried on Thursday with fourteen others of his brigade. The judicial apparatus was now working without pause: thousands of new prisoners were headed for Stella Maris, and the cells had to be cleared.

Ludovico now began what appeared to be a series of desperate calculations. It was as if he felt that in a clarified understanding of the workings of economics he could make himself comfortable with the notion of eternity—but due to the minimal relation of economics and eternity, he was forced to calculate faster and faster, and to no avail.

"Marxism won't carry you into the next world," Alessandro said. And then he asked, "How can you reserve your most sacred beliefs for a descriptive system, and one that is imperfect at that? I can't imagine myself believing in trigonometry or accounting, and yet you guide your soul according to a theory of economics."

"It won't fail me as surely as your system will fail you."

"I don't have a system."

"Theology is a system."

"Not my theology."

"Then what is it?"

"What is it? It's the overwhelming combination of all that I've seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me and refused to depart, that drives me again and again to a faith of which I am not sure, that is alluring because it will not stoop to be defined by so inadequate a creature as man. Unlike Marxism, it is ineffable, and it cannot be explained in words."

"Well," said Ludovico, "socialism is effable, which is what I like about it. It's solid. Very little of it is conjecture. It may be limited, but it's honest and down-to-earth and you can prove it. It gives me something I know I can hang on to."

"Why don't you hang on to a toilet?"

"I'd rather hang on to a toilet than believe in a collection of wishful thoughts."

"Then, in that case," Alessandro answered, "all you need do is secure yourself a toilet and you will have solved the mysteries of the universe. It would be easy enough to provide every man with a toilet at his death, or a porcelain amulet, and then the world would be perfect. Husbands would not grieve for their wives or wives for their husbands, children would not suffer the loss of parents, nor parents the loss of children, as long as production were regulated and the workers controlled the economy."

"To tell you the truth, Alessandro," Ludovico said combatively, "I'm not concerned with what happens after life on earth, since I believe that nothing does happen. I'm concerned with what I've
been allowed, and screw the end. It only takes a second. Why waste time worrying about it?"

"The answer is simple."

"The Church has a simple and unprovable answer for everything."

"I don't care what the Church says. This is a simple answer that comes from my own heart. I've seen and felt many things that I cannot believe are simply material artifacts. They so clearly transcend all that is earthly that I have no doubt that they can run rings around death."

"What things?"

"Had you been with me, Ludovico, for the last twenty-seven years, I could have shown them to you, one by one. They exist everywhere. They're as simple as a mother embracing her child, they're as simple as music, or the wind. You need only see them in the right way. Perhaps I could not have shown you. The question that comes to me is why would you need to be shown? Why haven't you already seen?"

"What, exactly, are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about love."

"I'm unconvinced."

"I wasn't attempting to convince you. I'm now sufficiently tranquil not to have to convince anyone of anything."

"Will you be tranquil in front of the firing squad?"

"I don't know. We'll see tomorrow. You'll be able to watch from the window." Alessandro winked at Ludovico, to show him that he was undisturbed.

"The way you winked," Ludovico said accusingly, "the way you winked at me was just like a religious fanatic."

"Sorry," Alessandro said. "I'll try to wink like a Marxist."

 

T
OWARD EVENING
a new guard opened the cell door. Alessandro's insides tightened. "I have until tomorrow morning," he said.

"You have a visitor," the guard announced.

"No one in Stella Maris has visitors."

"You do."

As Alessandro passed through the long, weakly lit corridors he was overcome with sadness and regret. He was so fatigued that had he simply lain down on the floor and tucked himself up against a wall he might have slept. A visitor, no matter who, would break his equilibrium and leave him in panic.

He was brought into a little room with a window facing the trees and open fields east of the prison. Sitting at a table, her hands clasped, was Luciana. Even in the dark he could see the blue in her eyes.

"Is there a lamp?" he asked.

With the turn of her head over a millimeter of space, and the slight closing of her eyes, she said that no lamp was in the room.

He sat down across from her. "I'm on the other side," Alessandro said, "the side that faces the sea. It's much warmer here, without the wind."

Luciana could think of nothing to say.

"How did you find me?"

"Orfeo."

"I thought Orfeo wasn't going to do the Giulianis any more favors."

"He said this was the last."

"No reprieve."

"He wouldn't do it. He was bitter. What's going to happen?"

"I was tried last week. They're going to execute me tomorrow."

"I came then, Alessandro. They turned me away. They turned away dozens of women—mothers and wives...."

"They shoot the sons and husbands and bury them." Alessandro stood up and went to the window. "I want to look at the trees," he said. "On the sea side, I forgot about trees. I suppose I'll never see one again, just as I'll never swim again, sleep, read, or see a child, an animal, or a field."

"What am I supposed to say?"

As Alessandro surveyed yellowing poplars with leaves that barely glittered in the last light, he asked, "How is Papa?"

Luciana closed her eyes briefly, thinking that she was out of Alessandro's sight, but he had her reflection in the partially open window, just enough in the vanishing light to see the change in her expression.

With discipline that she did not know she possessed, she said, "He's fine." As Alessandro continued to look over the fields, her voice was unwavering, and she held herself straight. "He's been strengthening for the past few weeks, and soon he'll come home. Now he's lucid. He makes no more comments about angels or waterfalls."

"I trust you haven't told him about me," Alessandro said to the reflection.

"No. He thinks you went back to the army, for the battle in the north. He reads the war news just as he used to. I told him that you went to join Rafi's unit, that Orfeo got you in, and that you'd be together. That is, after all, what I begged of Orfeo." She closed her eyes. "I even told Orfeo that I would sleep with him, but he was unmoved."

Still looking out the window, Alessandro winced. "Why did you tell our father these things, when the truth is so different?"

"Would you have wanted me to tell him?"

"Why not? His weak heart?"

"Yes. It would hurt him."

"But it wouldn't kill him. It wouldn't kill him, would it?"

"He should be allowed to live out the rest of his life without that kind of blow," she answered.

Stars were now visible in the sky above the hills, and, as Alessandro took in the last traces of the light, he saw that tears had begun to form in Luciana's eyes.

"You say he no longer speaks in delirium about angels and waterfalls."

"No longer."

"When I was little, before you were born, he told me that birds were angels, that they fall into the sky from above, and that flying through the air is for them like swimming through the sea for us, because the air is so much thicker than the ether. He said that they're sent to watch over us, and to give us reason to lift our eyes to heaven.

"And I asked him, I said, Papa, they die. How can God let His angels die? And he said, that's the saddest thing, that even God must let His angels die.

"I believed him, and then, of course, I disbelieved him, but now it's comforting to think that the birds are there because angels have dropped into the sky, like boys who jump into a river. Think of how exciting it would be. When I see birds flying at great heights, specks wheeling amid the clouds, I like to imagine that they've just come down, and are learning the air in hope of rising, so they can return.

"Luciana, everything rests on you now, and on your children. Even if Rafi doesn't come home, you must have children."

"By whom? The milkman?" she asked with unaccustomed bitterness.

"Even the milkman," was her brother's urgent response, but then he pulled back. "You're very beautiful. You'll have your choice."

He told her about Guariglia's children and asked that she apportion some money for them as long as she was able to do so and for as long as they needed it. She agreed.

"I put these burdens on you, Luciana, not only because I'm going to die tomorrow but also because I have to speak for our mother and father. I've always admired you, ever since you were a baby."

"You have?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"Yes. I thought you were far superior to me."

The guard opened the door and peered in. They were blinded by the electric light that earlier had seemed so dim. "Please finish," he said quietly.

Luciana trembled as she got up, and she was crying.

"I love you, Luciana, as a brother loves a sister."

She had no words.

They stood across the table, looking at one another. "Did you bury our father next to our mother?" he asked.

"Yes."

 

A
T TEN
an officer came to ask Alessandro if he wanted to be alone until morning. Alessandro explained apologetically that he would like that very much. Turning to Ludovico, he said, "I'll probably be talking to myself all night anyway, or singing, and it would keep you awake, because, among other things, I can't sing."

They smiled. Ludovico took Alessandro's hand, and gripped his elbow.

"Thank you, Ludovico. I wish you only the best."

Then Ludovico gathered his few possessions. Staring at the floor, and terribly afraid, for he knew that soon he would be in Alessandro's place, he was removed from the cell. The door swung closed, keys turned in the lock, and Alessandro was alone.

Contrary to his expectations, he neither talked to himself nor sang. The night had no words or melodies, but was insanely clear and cold, as if it were already winter.

Never in his life had Alessandro had to squint in starlight, but now the stars were so bright that at times he had to cover his eyes, and when they burned too brilliantly for keeping still, they sometimes shot across the sky in short bursts. Though these quiet illuminations vanished almost as soon as they had started, they lingered in the eye's inexact memory of their luminescent paths. Perhaps had they been stronger and more constant, and hung in a
dull white line, Alessandro's heart would not have risen each time he saw them. They were less than little puffs of smoke, their tracks thinner than a hair, the burst of light mainly a matter of memory.

 

B
EFORE DAWN,
a key was turned in the lock, and the door swung open. An officer, two soldiers, and a priest were astounded to see Alessandro sleeping soundly. One of the soldiers went in and touched his shoulder. Then he had to shake him.

"Did you sleep last night?" the officer asked.

Alessandro, who seemed perfectly rested and content, said "Yes, I had a very good sleep."

"Your nerves must be like rock," the officer said.

Alessandro threw down his blankets and began to walk. When they stopped him and manacled his hands behind his back he was so strangely undisturbed that they themselves were disturbed.

As they walked, the priest, an old man from a country town, asked Alessandro if he were a believer.

"Yes," Alessandro told him, "but I don't need your job of words to propel me directly into God's hands. If God will have me, it will have to be without an introduction."

 

W
HEN THEY
reached the
cortile
the light was just beginning to hide the stars, and the east was pale blue. The eight soldiers of the 19th River Guard were familiar with the part of military life in which men who are gathered before the sunrise speak in whispers, their rifles weighing down upon them, and their bodies shivering. Always, in training and before an attack, the rifles had appeared as dense black silhouettes against inexplicably lucid skies. Even on misty days the air at dawn had seemed clear, and even if one could not see the stars, one could feel them floating overhead.

The twenty soldiers of the firing squad, in crisp uniforms, dazed with sleep, their heavy well oiled rifles slung from their shoulders,
made the River Guard feel as if this were just one more dawn in the trenches, when they had had a good chance of staying alive.

Following them were four priests, each reading a different portion of the Bible both mechanically and sincerely. The words of great truths that everyone had heard since birth, when crossed in unintelligible babble, seemed a fitting end, and the archaic Biblical rhythms, spoken like interweaving songs, gave the River Guard courage to add to the courage they had had before. Not a single man of the eight wept or moaned. After years of fighting a cruel enemy in a difficult place, it simply did not occur to them.

The two officers strained to read their orders by starlight and the rim of dawn. Alessandro heard someone in the firing squad talking about a girl, and although he heard neither a description nor her name, he knew from the tone and the intonation of the word
she
that she was young.

Guariglia was shaking. "Stay in control," Alessandro said to his friend in a low whisper. Guariglia took in a breath that was almost a gasp, as if he would no longer be able to restrain himself but wanted Alessandro to know, at least, that he was still there.

"Stay in control," Alessandro repeated. "Your children and your wife must know that you died defiantly. If they know, they'll be proud of you."