A Soldier of the Great War (8 page)

"I don't see," Nicolò declared. "I don't see stars out there, only above." He strained and squinted, moving his head to and fro.

Happy to have beaten the moon to the top of the hill, and to have a lovely lair from which to capture it as it rose, Alessandro might have ignored Nicolò's inability to see the stars near the horizon, but half a century of explanation and elucidation would not let him. "Look straight up," he commanded.

"Where?"

"There." He pointed toward Rigel, his favorite star. "Count the stars that you can see in a space the size of a coin."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"They stand on top of each other."

"What do you mean, 'they stand on top of each other'?"

"They're too blurry."

"They don't look like pinpoints?"

"No, they look like someone spilled paint."

The old man pulled from one of his jacket pockets a rigid leather case that he snapped open in a well practiced movement of his left hand. "Try looking through these. They may make things sharper."

Nicolò took a pair of gold-framed spectacles from the bed of velvet upon which they had been resting, and put them on. He turned his head back to Rigel, and, for the first time, he saw the stars.

"And those must be all wrong for you," Alessandro said. "Yet, an improvement?"

"Yes! The stars are deep in the sky, and I can see them one by one."

"Have you never had spectacles?"

"Never. I don't need them." He paused. "I do need them."

"Was it because they were too expensive?"

"No. In the clinic I could have gotten them for free. They make things sharper, but girls don't like them."

"Who said?"

"Everybody."

"I've found it to be just the opposite, and as for the opinion that girls are less pretty if they wear glasses, that's only for apes. Many times, the thick spectacles of a young girl have been the barb of the hook she sinks into my heart. Even these days, I'm entranced by the nearsighted ones who sit in the front row and stare at me through concentric rings of sparkling crystal. And when they're slightly cross-eyed, it's that much better."

"You're crazy."

"A marvelous invention, entirely compatible with physical beauty."

"They were invented?"

"Do you think they grow in the wild?"

"Who invented them?"

"A Florentine, Alessandro di Spina. Spectacles even have a patron saint, Saint Jerome, because in Ghirlandaio's portrait of him they hang from the edge of a table as if they were the commonest things in the world. It was Raphael, however, who made them famous, in his painting of Pope Leo the Tenth, the four-eyed son of Lorenzo de Medici, the one who expelled Martin Luther."

"I don't know any of those guys," Nicolò said.

"That's all right. I don't either."

"Except Saint Jerome. I know the saints."

"That's good. Whose day is it today?"

"I don't know."

"I thought you did."

"Not like that I don't. You think the Pope knows?"

"I'd bet on it."

"So what saint?"

"I'm not the Pope, but today is the ninth of August. Saint Romanus, I believe. He was a Byzantine."

Nicolò, who had never heard the word
Byzantine,
said, "That's too bad."

"Where's the water?" Alessandro asked. "And the chocolate."

"My father says that if you eat too much chocolate, you turn black."

"That's undoubtedly true," Alessandro answered. "After all, chocolate comes from Africa, and Africans are black. But what about Switzerland? A lot of chocolate comes from Switzerland."

"So?"

"Are the Swiss black?"

"They're not?"

"Well what do you think?"

"I don't know," Nicolò offered, obviously confused. Taking the water bottle from Alessandro's briefcase and placing it carefully on the flat slab, he asked, "Is Switziland in Africa?"

"You mean
Swaziland?
"

"
Switziland?"
Nicolò insisted.

Alessandro felt his heart pounding against his chest. His breath came slowly. "What did you say?" he asked.

Nicolò struggled to envision the world. "Which is the one that has an ocean, Africa or Peru?"

"Let's start closer to home," Alessandro said. "First, name the countries of Europe."

"What are they?"

"I'm asking you."

"Asking me what?"

"What are the countries of Europe?"

"They're countries," Nicolò said.

"Name them."

"Italy, of course..."

"Excellent."

"France."

"Yes."

"Germany, Spain, Ireland, and Mahogany."

"Mahogany?"

"It's a country, isn't it? It's in Brazil."

"It isn't, but keep going."

"Is Germany a country?"

"Yes, but you've said it already."

"There are more?"

Alessandro nodded.

"Is there one called Great Dane?"

"When you get back to Rome," Alessandro said gravely, "you must look at a map. Haven't you ever seen a map of the world?"

"Yes I have, but I don't know what it says. I can't read."

"You can't read at all?"

"No, not even my own name. I told you, I never went to school."

"You have to learn to read. They'll teach you at the factory."

"They say I have to read before I become an apprentice, and they say they'll teach me. I'm supposed to go to a place in Monte Sacro. It's okay. I can do numbers. I can do numbers very well. Look! The moon."

Alessandro turned to the east. His cane clattered down upon the rock as he caught sight of a tiny orange dome, rising coolly, unlike the molten sunrise, from behind the farthest line of hills.

The arc rapidly turned into a silent half circle, spying upon them with its old and tired face. It had about it the air of being intensely busy, as if its occupation with the task of floating in perfect orbits had made it justly self-absorbed.

"The whole world stops as this stunning dancer rises," Alessandro said, "and its beauty puts to shame all our doubts."

It
is
like a dancer, Nicolò thought, as the perfectly round moon began to float airily above the silhouetted hills it had begun to illumine. "So smooth," he said.

"Without saying anything, it says so much," Alessandro continued. "In that sense, it's better than the sun, which is always holding forth, and butting at you like a ram."

Because of Alessandro's spectacles, Nicolò was able to see that the moon had mountains and seas. His sudden apprehension of the moon, so close and full, riding over them like a huge airship, endeared it to him forever. For perhaps the first time in his life he was lifted entirely outside himself and separated from his wants. As he contemplated the huge smoldering disc he was easily able to suspend time and the sensation of gravity, and a sort of internal electricity overflowed within him. It came in waves, and grew stronger and stronger as the moon glided from orange and amber to pearl and white. And then, after only a few minutes, the soul that had taken flight returned to a body in which the heart was pounding like the heart of a bird that has just alighted from a long fast flight.

"What happened to me?" he asked, with a convulsive shudder.

"When I was your age," Alessandro said, "I had already learned to compress what you just experienced into bolts of pure lightning."

Nicolò didn't know what to think, so he stared ahead.

"When a great sight comes to sweep you down, fight it. It will take you, for sure, but keep your eyes open, and you can beat it, like molten steel, into beams of light.

"I used to take long walks in the city, and when I was able to immerse myself in a cross-fire of beautiful images I would ignite just as you did. It has many names, and is one of the prime forces of history, and yet it keeps itself hidden, as if it were shy.

"A favorite trick of mine, that I have since abandoned, was to concentrate the overflow upon the horses of the
carabinieri
to make them rear up on their hind legs and whinny. They're very sensitive to human feelings, and when they know that you are greatly moved they will often react in sympathetic fashion."

"How did you do that?"

"It wasn't hard. I had to be all worked up, but when I was young I was like a perpetual lightning storm. I would concentrate
upon the horse as if he were the emblem and paradigm of every horse that ever was or ever will be, and then throw the current across the gap.

"The horse would turn his head to me and draw it back, widening his eyes. Then he'd shudder as if a sudden chill had come over him. At that point I'd open the gates to let the power sweep out all at once, and he'd rear and cry out the way horses do, with a sound that seems able to pierce through all things.

"I'll never forget the surprise of the
carabinieri,
the fall of their coats, and the banging of their swords as they stood rigidly in the stirrups so as not to be thrown. They were never angry. After the horses had expressed themselves so completely, they and their riders always seemed to regard each other with awe. More often than not, as I passed I would hear the rider saying to his agitated mount, 'What got into you? What has moved you?' You could see them patting the horses' necks to calm them down.

"I don't do it anymore. I'm not sure I could.

"But the moon, what a lovely thing. To see it makes me very happy. My wife's face, especially when she was young, would have been perfect—in the sense that she could have been a star in films—had her eyes not been so full of love. When she smiled," he said, indicating the cool glow that had begun to climb steeply into the sky, "it was as lovely as that."

"This is how you've never left her," Nicolò said.

Alessandro made a curt bow, closing his eyes for an instant. "In this and in many other ways, but they are not enough. My symbols, my parallels, my discoveries, cannot even begin to do her justice and cannot bring her back. The most I can do is to make the memory of her shine. So I touch lightly, ever so lightly, seeking after gentle things, for she was gentle.

"Now look at the apposition," he said, drawing himself up from what might have made him falter, "of the moon on one hand, and the city of Rome on the other.

"Rome still looks like catacombs of fire, and will remain this shattered and amber color throughout the night, although as morning comes the whiter lights will leave the field more and more to the strings of amber streetlights. But the moon, as it moves, has already run through a number of scenes. First it was a farmers fire, almost dead in the field, ruby red. Then it ripened through a thousand shades of orange, amber, and yellow. As it gets lighter it sheds its mass, until somewhere between cream and pearl, halfway to its apogee, it will seem like a burst of smoke that wants to run away on the wind. Then do you know what happens?"

Nicolò moved his head back and forth.

"It gets as white and hard as glacial ice. It dazzles so that you can barely look at it—and all the weight comes back until it seems like one of those huge chandeliers that, at the opera or in palaces of state, in being so high, sharp, and heavy, tend to discourage people from standing underneath them.

"With the city off to one side and the moon directly above, I hope I don't walk crookedly, like a Dutch milkmaid with one bucket at the end of her yoke and the other balanced on her head.

"In the darkness you will see two large bodies of light—one fixed and the other moving in a sure arc. Only in the morning, when the sun comes up, will you see three, and, as the sun rises, the other two will fade away."

"Not true," Nicolò said. "Look. Here's the third. It's making noise."

Alessandro turned, and saw lights winding along an erratic path. The perfect apposition of the moon and the city of Rome was broken by the unexpected arrival of a convoy of cars and trucks. One of the trucks, strung with lights that sparkled across the valley, was carrying a brass band.

"That's why Acereto was deserted," Alessandro speculated. "They must have been helping out in Lanciata. It's higher and colder there. They probably pool resources to take in the crop at Lanciata first. And they bring along a band."

"They're going to pass by," Nicolò declared.

"Of course. This is the road."

"What shall we do?"

"What would you wish to do?"

"Should we just sit here?"

"Unless for some reason you want to stop them," Alessandro answered.

"They won't even see us."

"So what. We'll see them."

"We'll be in the dark. They'll go right by."

"What's wrong with that?"

"I don't know. It'll be as if we don't exist, as if we're dead."

Alessandro nodded.

"I would have run out to greet them."

"You can if you wish."

"I don't want to be a pair of eyes in the darkness."

"Struggle as you may," Alessandro said, "that is what you will someday be. Tell me, a minute ago was Rome any the less, was the moon any the less, because you could not run out to greet them?"

Nicolò was already resigned to watching the lights as they passed in the dark. "No," he said. "They weren't less."

"If anything," Alessandro continued, "the distance is to our advantage. I'm perfectly content to watch the celebrants from here in the dark. Let them go by. We'll lose nothing. To the contrary, and may God forgive us, as they go past and we remain, we'll take from them everything they have."

 

P
ARTS OF
a song floated up to them on the wind, and were interrupted like a telephone conversation on a faulty line, but as the band truck and the convoy it led came closer, the music was welded together and its stammerings vanished. Riding on the truck was a village orchestra with old instruments, not enough time to practice, and a little too much wine. Every musician, however, was
a virtuoso who followed an independent line. Though the conductor made dramatic, elegant, sweeping gestures, the meaning of which he had never learned, even had he known what they meant his musicians would not have.

Still, the music was enchanting, if only because of accidental harmonies in its collective dissonance. The clarinet and the glockenspiel, unknowingly, would for a moment or two engage in an apparently random duet that could have put the musicians of La Scala to shame, and then go their separate ludicrous ways. Sound upon sound, reinforcing and combining outside the poorly followed plan, sometimes lit up the amateur orchestra with a kind of glory that transfixed the old man, who knew that this was how brass bands have packed village squares from time immemorial.