A Soldier of the Great War (68 page)

The Milanese said so softly that only Alessandro could hear, "You should be more exact."

"What do you want from a sardine?"

"Precision. A sardine is a precise kind of fish. Look how many get in one can. They don't fuck around, because they don't have heads. We should be like that."

"We are." Alessandro smiled crookedly at the Milanese, who briefly smiled back. Then, as the ranks grew still, they stared ahead, listening to the occasional exhalations of steam and watching a curtain of light envelop the mountain range ahead of them.

They heard an automobile engine in the distance. Officers began to primp, and some ran to and fro. It was just like the action on stage before the curtain rises on the elephant scene of
Aïa.

"Dogs," someone said, in reference to their officers, but, still—without orders—the ranks stiffened.

A staff car approached from down the mountainside, winding through a small Alpine village and shifting gears for the last, steep, snow-covered stretch. Alessandro had never seen a car go uphill in
snow. This one had chains on the drive wheels, and its tires dug into the compacted road surface, like a cookie cutter.

Though the general was young, he had been in the mountains for years, and he was attentive not to the scenery but to the fresh troops. They stood rigidly, but they still had an air of confusion and dizziness. He, on the other hand, had long ago assimilated the grand scale of the peaks.

Realizing that it would be difficult to speak above the noise of his automobile, he signaled for his driver to stop the engine. Then, apart from the irregular hissing of the locomotive, the only sound was the sound of the wind. As a hawk passed over them, the general let it speak for him, and not until it had disappeared did he begin, by raising his stick to point to the section of blue that the hawk had deserted.

"Did you see that?" he asked, referring to the hawk. "That tells the story. A lot of hawks are still up here. They don't pick at carcasses. They fly above us as if we were unworthy of notice, which, in their world, with its time, is quite true. As impossible as it now seems, the mountains will soon be silent. We and our guns will have come and gone, and the wind and trees will stay forever.

"This white and silver one that flew overhead was going north up the valley. You'd think that I'd sent him, because that's where I'm going to send you." He turned to the north, and, with his arm still extended, turned three-quarters back—an attractive gesture that seemed to say he might understand paradoxes and contradictions.

"That ridge, in the west," he said, pointing to a line, far above the tree line, disappearing into the mass of white summits, "goes all the way to Innsbruck. Between it and its twin to the east, not far north, is the Brennero. Some of you may have passed through the Brennero on the way to Munich or Warsaw. We are going that way too, on our way to Innsbruck, because we haven't any other way to go. If we move through the valley they'll fire down at us, so we have to go straight on, confined to a narrow field of maneuver.

"I myself would prefer to outflank them by way of Norway or the Black Sea, but, not being British, we don't have that option. For us, it's straight up the camel's back and right down his throat. They know we're coming and they've got the route fortified with belt after belt of trenchwork, mine fields, and firing positions.

"These things are a rather intricate piece of art, at least in the Germanic sense. Whenever they have a trench, they've got a number of trenches behind it, like zither strings. If you see wire, it means mines. And it seems they never are content with just one row. They alternate in many layers. After all, they invented the Sacher torte, didn't they?

"You may wonder how I can ask you to die so that we can take apart their layer cake, especially when you and I know that no matter what we do, the mountains will soon be silent. How is it that, if you turn from this meaningless task, I will have you shot?

"It's rather simple. If I turn from this unpleasant task, I, too, will be shot. So it goes all the way to the top, and you know as well as I that the chiefs of the people, if they surrender, are shot by the people they would shoot for surrendering.

"This is a conundrum easily resolved by shooting only the people on the other side, and that's how war goes on and on. Though the whole world may have gone mad, we are going to regain our sanity, gradually and fully, by means of a slow and rewarding fiction. I am asking you to go to Innsbruck. Every meter will be contested, and for every meter, someone will die, but we are going to regain our sanity by vesting in each particle of ground an artificial value. It has been done throughout history with metals and spices. Merchants assess their lives in numbers, and they are almost always saner than those who set out to seek the truth. Like merchants, we will peg our sanity to artificial standards—land taken, and days alive.

"I'm responsible to Rome for capturing ground, and I cannot change that. I'm responsible to you for keeping you alive, and that
I will not change. I do my best to balance the two. We don't practice the same carnage up here as they do lower down. It's the terrain, the thin air, and our relative lack of mass. And the north is not infinity, for the mountains stop, and then you're in Germany. If you survive, you'll be able to remember having been there. You'll recall it fifty years from now, in some quiet place, surrounded by children, not a single one knowing the folly to which you were committed, and all sweetly ready to commit it anew."

He hesitated. "And if you don't ever leave this place ... Well, the air is magical here, and so is the sudden darkness, and so is the chill. In the daytime, in the light, with the sky changing, nothing is quite as alive. At night or in storms it seems like the tunnel to death. Don't misinterpret me. I want that tunnel so crowded with the braying enemy that no room will be left for us, but, should you not make it back to a table in the piazza, you will have died in the best place for dying the world has ever known. What I mean is, here, you're practically at the gates."

 

A
FTER THREE
hours' march they turned off the road into a pine forest heavy with wet snow, the last stand of trees before the meadows that led, eventually, to Innsbruck. In the near distance they could see the Italian fortifications and trenchworks, and, beyond them, the Austrian.

Theirs was only a little crowded corner of the forest. Already settled among the trees were twenty thousand men who appeared to have been there for quite some time: they had elaborate tents, log shacks, and covered galleries around their mess fires. Not 3 single tree had been cut for firewood or construction, because the trees sheltered them from enemy observation and broke the force of incoming shells.

Alessandro's brigade divided into battalions, companies, and platoons, and pitched tents of sand-colored canvas. They tied the
tent stays to trunks and branches, extending them at all angles and elongating them to reach the anchor points. This transformed the densely populated forest, which had been open and free of brush, into a maze of twisting passages formed at random where the spider-work of tent stays did not block the way.

Field kitchens and latrines stood uncomfortably back to back in small clearings. The cooking apparatus for Alessandro's battalion blazed within as the cooks made still more
tortellini in brodo.
The reason that Italy had entered the war, Guariglia had said, was to stimulate the production of
tortellini.
Though the broth might be watery and the
tortellini
full of foreign matter and donkey meat, it would be hot, and, in the mountains, anything hot was a virtue.

Alessandro claimed a space in the corner of a ten-man tent. He didn't want to know anyone, he was too tired, and he knew it wasn't worth the effort, for they would die or disappear just like everyone he had ever met in the army. Though he had fallen in with the Milanese, it was by accident. The Milanese looked much like Alessandro, but Alessandro thought he was a harder case—tougher, older, and more military. Unaware of what he himself had become, Alessandro was wrong. They spoke to one another in mild insults and half-insane prolixity.

As they lined up to get their soup and bread, snow began to fall. Almost first in line, Alessandro and the Milanese, independently, had drunk the soup as fast as they could, put the bread in their pockets, and run for the latrines. Through the hissing snow came an invisible voice from a fetid canvas stall. "It makes sense, of course, that two roller coaster guys should eat as we did and pocket their bread, but even though we shared the same profession in civilian life..."

"Avocation," Alessandro interrupted. "For me, it was just a hobby."

"Naturally," said the Milanese, who, because of the fierce and explosive quality of army food, could speak no further.

After they had washed their mess kits they walked through the snow to the tent, where they found only a young boy who was too sick to eat. They removed wool sweaters from their packs, put them on under their coats, and lay down to sleep. It was not very cold, but when the heat of the broth wore off they began to shiver, and they took out their blankets.

"A beef-ox," the Milanese suddenly declared. "I was a beef-ox."

"What?" the bleary-eyed sick boy asked, turning on his elbow.

"Not a bad way to make a living, if you play your cards right," Alessandro said.

"Not bad at all."

"Tell me," Alessandro asked, "how did you know to get to the head of the line, eat quickly, run for the latrines, and the rest?"

"How do you think?"

"A veteran of the line."

"Just like you."

"What were you doing in the quarry?"

"What were
you
doing?"

"Too serious to say," Alessandro answered, thinking of his father, Fabio, and Guariglia, "and too sad."

"That's where we differ," the Milanese declared. "Me, I was too frivolous."

"In the army? How did you manage it?"

"I'm almost ashamed to say. I left the ranks—I deserted, if you must—because I have an uncontrollable craving."

"For what?"

"I'm ashamed."

"Just say it."

"Office supplies."

Alessandro stared at the Milanese in disbelief only because he knew that he was telling the truth. The sick boy rolled over, sighing as if in a dream, and the Milanese went on with his confession. "War does crazy things. I always liked fine paper and envelopes,
expensive pens, drawers full of little brass clips, labels, ink bottles—you know. And staple guns. And I've always been partial to portfolios, folders, and briefcases, and postal scales. These things are ... they're comforting. They're like presents under a Christmas tree. My desire for them is informed by the same impulse, I believe, that sculpted the national character of Switzerland. I even like rubber stamps."

"What about postage stamps?" Alessandro inquired.

"I love postage stamps. Nothing is as reassuring."

"What does your father do?"

"He passed away when I was seven. He had a stationery store," the Milanese said. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Alessandro said.

The Milanese went on. "Nothing is as reassuring as a good supply of paper clips. If you have them in little leather boxes, it makes you feel like Cesare Borgia."

"And you deserted," Alessandro asked, "to buy office supplies?"

"Not to buy them. To be with them. They're going to keep me alive."

"How?"

"Yes. My desk at home is perfectly stocked. I have the most complete selection of papers, envelopes, implements, stamps, and supplies that you can imagine. I have Venetian stationery and Florentine boxes, and enough stamps to last for twenty years—if I live, if I don't get a disease of the liver, or a stroke, or something like that. I spent all the money I had, and everything is arranged just so."

"How is that going to keep you alive?" the sick boy asked. He no longer seemed so sick.

"My books are dusted, alphabetized, and catalogued. Every week, my mother winds the clock. Wood is in the stove, ready to burn. My mail is stacked carefully in a walnut box. The lamps are well polished."

"But how is that going to keep you alive?"

"As long as its kept in perfect order," the Milanese said with disarmingly deep concentration, "it gives me a protective aura. It's around me, lock set, like the atoms of a crystal. Bullets won't touch me if my office is tranquil."

"What if your mama comes in and craps up all the stuff?" the boy asked.

The Milanese smiled. "Then I'll die."

Alessandro looked away. "How long were you in the line?"

"A year and a half," the Milanese said.

"It did things to you, you know."

"It may have, but I'm going to live. How long were you in the line?"

"Two years."

"Don't tell me that your mind is completely unaffected."

"Did I say that?"

"You implied it. Where were you?"

"Mostly on the Isonzo. And you?"

"Right here," the Milanese said in a hopeless and resigned way.

"In this wood?"

The Milanese shook his head in the affirmative. Alessandro could just hear his blankets move. "In this wood, in every corner of it, and in the trenches on the hill. I know every one, the Austrian trenches, too. They used to be ours."

"It's not good to come back to the same place."

"I have my aura."

"Does your aura extend a few meters from you? An aura can't be as tight as a silk stocking."

"Oh yes it can. It's tighter than a silk stocking. One thing about an aura is that the man next to you can be blown into tiny particles, and you remain unscathed. Sorry. And there's something else you should be worried about if you have no aura."

"Which is?"

"They haven't passed out ordnance. In the whole brigade we have no machine guns. I haven't seen any mortars, grenades, or flares, and we have only four clips of ammunition for each rifle."

"What could happen between now and tomorrow?" Alessandro asked.

"They could attack."

"But the trenches ... We're in reserve. You don't think it's likely that the trenches would go tonight, do you?"