Once an Eagle (21 page)

“Absolutely,” Damon answered. “Lead on, mister linguist.”

They retraced their steps, followed the river to a second bridge, this one intact, and turned right up a tiny street filled with narrow houses jammed against each other like an old man's teeth. A church steeple dark as ancient armor glided along above the tile roofs. They turned onto a still narrower lane where the front doors—massive oak doors with carved lion's heads and flowered iron knockers—opened right onto the cobbles. Nearby Damon could hear the high rhythmic clank of a forge, and saw across the way the angry red glow, and showers of blue-white sparks like tiny stars. Michele turned and swung open one of the great doors, and they climbed the stairs to a gloomy landing.

“Voilà,” she was saying, “c'est affreux, hein?”

It was
affrur,
all right—if
affrur
meant a complete wreck. The door to the apartment had apparently been forced, then smashed off its hinges; a funny-looking upholstered couch with a wavy, off-centered back had lost one of its claw legs, an oak table was lying on its side, its top split right down the middle. Michele was talking to Devlin rather nervously. Damon couldn't get very much of it. It had something to do with American soldiers at a café nearby who had got drunk and followed the girls home and forced their way in, thrown the furniture around and generally ransacked the place before they left.

“Did they steal?” Devlin demanded sharply. “Est-ce qu'ils ont volé des choses? monnaie? argenterie? choses comme ça?” They shook their heads. Had they reported the affair to the provost marshal, the military police?

The girls exchanged glances, shook their heads again rapidly. It was impossible: they didn't know the soldiers' names. They fell into an odd little silence; they seemed to be at a loss for anything to say. Damon watched the two women reflectively. There was something he didn't quite understand—and then all at once he did. He knelt down and examined the broken leg of the couch.

“Beautiful carving, Dev.”

“Sons of bitches,” Devlin was saying savagely. “Taking advantage of a couple of helpless young girls! Christ, I'd like to get my hooks on them …”

“Well. You won't.”

“Probably some of that lousy Third Battalion—a bunch of counter-jumpers and plug-uglies if I ever saw any …” He was waving his arms; he had worked himself up into a fine French-Irish rage. “I'm going to raise hell, Sam. I'm going to see Caldwell—”

“Look, Dev—”

“—no bunch of tinhorn baboons is going to get away with a thing like this!”

“Dev, for Christ sake …” Damon got to his feet and stood close in front of him, tapping him on the chest with his forefinger until he stopped shouting. “Dev, they don't
want
to go to the MPs. Can't you see that?”

Devlin's eyes went blank. “They don't?”

“No. They don't. They—can't …” He gave the Sergeant a long, hard look. “Can't you see how it is?”

Devlin stared carefully back at him, then at the girls. “Sure,” he said in a different tone. “Yeah. Sure. I can see how it is.”

“Okay. Now the thing to do is fix the place up for them. That's what they want.”

“Right.” Devlin held a long, complicated colloquy with Michele, after which the two men descended to the ground floor and went out back through a little yard where three or four scrawny chickens scratched listlessly or bathed in the hot dust, fluffing their feathers. At the end of the yard was a sort of stone dungeon without a door. Devlin hallooed and a figure came out of the dungeon, a small, hunched-over man with white hair and mustaches and a narrow, leathery face that twisted into a mask of hostility on recognizing the uniforms. Devlin greeted him with a lot of Gallic frills and salutations; the gnome stared back at them implacably. The young ladies had sent them down to ask for some tools, Devlin went on in the friendliest manner. “Peut-être vous avez des outils, monsieur? marteau? scie à main? rabot?”

The old man gazed at them a moment longer, then turned away and led them inside to an ancient narrow chest with great brass handles at each end. He lifted the lid and crouched over it in a proprietary way, watching them.

“Oui, très très bon.” Devlin picked up a wooden jack plane, spun the cylinder deftly and lifted out the iron, running his thumb along the cutting edge. “Look at that, Sam. That's great steel.”

The grognard edged closer, his bright old eyes glinting in the damp gloom. “Vous êtes menuisier, vous?” he croaked, pointing a crabbed finger.

Devlin smiled. “Non, non—aide de charpentier, seulement. Mais mon oncle, il est maître.—De bon acier, hein?”

The old man smiled a wintry smile. “Regardez, monsieur,” he said, and turned the block to the light. Burned in the wood was the legend
P. Grimaud, 1837.

My God, Damon thought, that's thirty years before Nebraska was admitted into the Union—that's ten before the first permanent settlement. He watched the old man, who was drawing one of his gnarled hands back and forth beneath his mustaches and explaining something to Devlin about the plane, whose base was a rich, deep wood, smooth as satin with oiling and use. They cared for things here; it was an attitude he'd learned to respect in the Army. But war didn't respect any thing, or place, or person. It crushed everything that happened to stand in its way …

Devlin had shouldered the chest. They both shook hands with the old man and climbed the stairs again; the girls were sitting side by side, mending the upholstery on the couch.

“Bon. Au travail, hein?” Flexing his muscles, Devlin struck a pose in the doorway, full of prowess, noble resolve, the afternoon sun blazing on his face; the girls laughed, watching him.

They removed their blouses, took the door off and set in a wooden key where it was badly damaged, reset the lock and rehung it. They repaired the foot on the funny-looking divan, which Michele called a shays-long, and then began on the table. They had a great time. They hammered and sawed and chiseled and called back and forth to each other and the girls. It was very peaceful in the long, high-ceilinged room. Damon worked slowly and carefully; the old, worn tools came to his grip naturally, the shavings curled away from his hands and littered the floor around him, the sun poured through the casement windows; the girls chattered along, talking of things he only dimly understood—and it didn't matter. He felt as though some parts of him had been restored. Only the thunder-mutter of artillery off to the northwest recalled the war.

Later they built a fire in the hearth with the wood ends and shavings, sat at the repaired table and ate the thick green soup and drank two bottles of pinot noir; they tore huge pieces of bread from a long loaf and wiped their plates clean, the way the girls did. Devlin was talking a blue streak now, his thin, handsome face flushed with wine, pouring out French and English in a headlong potpourri. He told them of days in Chicopee Falls, his hometown, of coming off work from the mill in the early fall mornings with the sun burnished gold behind the trees and the ground crackling white with frost; and Michele and Denise talked about the war, the terrible days in '14, with the Germans at Charleroi, at Cambrai, at Soissons, and the Uhlans sweeping the country everywhere like a plague. They had left their homes and sat in the woods all night for two nights, hungry and miserable, not knowing what to do. And then the miracle, when General Maud'huy had captured the heights above Montmirail, and the sales Boches had fallen back … But that had been only the beginning, not the end. After that, year after year of war and no end in sight. Less and less food, clothes, implements—less and less of everything. And every family in Charmevillers in mourning. And only the year before the great mutiny …

Damon pricked up his ears at this—he had caught the word. A mutiny? in the French army? Well no, not really, Michele answered; it was simply a warning to the officers. The poilus refused to attack in the face of certain death; they would hold the line, but they would not advance, not anymore. They had suffered too much.

“Well,
we're
going to advance,” Devlin declared. “And then this old guerre's going to be over toot sweet.”

“You—croyez ça?” They were all talking in eerie mixtures of pidgin English and French, divining one another's replies more than understanding them explicitly.

“Of course! The Irlandais and the French can lick la monde. Didn't you know that?”

“C'est entendu! Mais—Sam …” and Denise pointed at Damon with an amused, quizzical look.

“Quoi? Sam's half-Irish. Same as me. We're going to run those Heinies all the way to Siberia on a sled, and bring back the Kaiser with an apple in his mouth. You watch our smoke.” Picking up an apple from a blue earthenware bowl he popped it in his mouth and pantomimed the Emperor Wilhelm II with his head on a platter, mustaches drooping, eyes goggling—jumped to his feet, snatched up his soup plate and a gnarled walking stick he'd spied in a corner of the room, and fluttering the plate like a boater went into a strutting song and dance, his eyes rolling, his voice high and clear in the early evening stillness:

 

“I'm gonna make a pickelhaube outa Kaiser Bill

And then I'll sashay all over Paree!

Turn on my maximum power,

Light up the Eiffel Tower,

With Madame Pompadour to keep me companee …

I'm gonna take the iron hinges off that Brandenburg Gate

And then I'll paint up the town of Paree!

Get me beaucoup de cuties

Who all know their duty's

To make a Turkish sultan outa me!”

 

The girls broke into applause, shrieking with laughter, and Devlin paused, pleased with the results. “Encore?” he called, his hand cupped behind his ear. “Do I hear an encore? Yeah, you're looking at Jolly Jack Devlin, the terror of the AEF …”

“Ah, Dev,” Michele cried, laughing, wiping at her eyes. “You are si éveillé!”

“That's me.”

“Et si—si débonnaire …”

“What's that mean? en anglais?”

She shook her head happily. Her eyes were half-closed, her hair fell away from her forehead in little dark waves, her lips were curved in the gentlest of smiles; and watching her Damon started. With a quiet little shock he saw that she was attracted to Devlin—not as a wild knight errant in khaki or an easy mark, but as a man. His vitality, his joie de vivre, his heedless generosity had reached her. He said in an undertone: “Dev … ”

But Devlin didn't hear him. He came up to Michele with mincing, arch entreaty, bowed and said: “Est-ce que Mademoiselle me fera l'honneur de cette danse?”

Staring up at him, his blouse open, his puttees unwound, his red hair tousled from the swim in the Marne, she laughed—then her face became all at once very grave, almost pained. She rose to her feet and put her arm on his shoulder. He lifted her to him light as a feather, and began to sing softly:

 

“Standing by the river, lights all aglow,

Thinking of an evening out of lost long ago;

Lord, all I can do is pray

Let it be somewhere, someday …

—Why did I ever let you out of my sight?”

 

They moved slowly, dreamily, around the little room. Michele's head was on his shoulder now; she seemed enervated, almost drugged, without will or constraint. And sitting at the table with his glass in his hand, watching the two figures clinging to each other, swaying, Damon felt brushed with dread, he did not know why. He looked away. Outside the windows the sun was sinking behind a graceful row of Raebyrne's skirmisher trees. The sky dipped into coral and lemon hues, a pale rose on the undersides of the little snatches of cloud; and the river looked not so much like water as metal cooling with the advent of dusk. Far away the big guns rumbled and bumped their slow avalanche of war. He shivered and crossed his arms. They must go. Now. If they didn't—if they didn't something terrible would happen.

“Dev,” he said quietly. “Dev, we've got to go …”

“No.” Michele turned and stared at him. “No—pourquoi? You go,” she said to him; and to Devlin, pleading, “Qu'il part, alors—mais vous restez ici, un peu … Attendez!” she cried; running over to a large oak cabinet she lifted out a massive Gramophone with a fluted, four-sided trumpet. “Music! Pour la danse …”

Denise frowned and called something to her sharply, in warning; Michele replied placatingly, pumping the crank with a kind of desperation. There was the high sea roar of the needle, and then a waltz spilled out of the speaker, tinny and tremulous. Devlin dropped his arms.

“I can't waltz.”

“Alors, je vous instruirai,” Michele said softly; and she swung lightly with him, chanting, “
Un,
deux, trois,
un,
deux, trois,” until he'd caught the lifting, swooping rush of it, and they whirled together silently in the long room above the Marne, their shadow gliding along the ivory walls.

Sam picked up his wineglass and set it down again, and clasped his hands together on the table. He had the sense of spying on some fragile personal intimacy, and it turned him uneasy: he did not want to feel what he was feeling, and listened intently again to Denise. She came, she said, from a town called Pontoise, which was on the other side of Paris; she was only visiting Michele, who was her dearest friend. There was something about a Citroën munitions plant—they had worked in it together, Damon thought—and then Michele's mother had become gravely ill and Michele had come home here to be with her; and then she had died and Michele had been left alone in the world. What about her father? he asked. Oh, he had been killed in the first days of the war. Had there been a man? Denise nodded. Her fiancé had been killed at Madriant, the year before. Now there was no one to look after her except an aunt in Lyon whom she detested. Denise had been pleading with her to go to Lyon but she would not. She was so violent! so violent and headstrong (he felt Denise was saying this): she seized on something—an idea, a hope, a person—and nothing else mattered. And now she persisted in staying on in this place alone, a prey to her loneliness, her despair …