Losing Julia (29 page)

“You just quit?”

“Oh sometimes I make quite a scene before I storm out of the place. I’m not very good at taking orders.” I watched the way she gestured as she talked and it occurred to me that she lived more fully in her body than I did.

“Who is?”

We walked in silence for a while, and I began thinking of Charlotte and Sean and how far away they seemed. Was I a family man already? Amazing. Little ol’ Paddy married. A house. A career. How fast it all happened, and I barely remember making certain decisions.

I glanced over at Julia. Maybe this would just seem dreamlike when I returned to Paris. Maybe from a distance it would even seem silly, a brief and selfish indulgence, though I didn’t think so. But it would be good to see Sean. I’d never been away from him for more than a few days. Does a three-year-old stop long enough to miss his daddy? Thinking of him brought a smile to my face.

“Do you want to know who one of my heroes is?” asked Julia, stopping by a small stream.

“Who?”

“Michelangelo. I read that someone once asked him what he was doing with his chisel and do you know what he said?”

I looked at her expectantly.

“He said he was trying to free an angel.”

As we made our way over rocks in the stream I reached out and took Julia’s hand. Neither of us let go as we headed up the gradual slope of the wooded hills and each time we passed a ruined bunker or trench or rusted bayonet or boot I felt the gentle squeeze of her hand in mine.

IT’S RAINING AGAIN,
huge cold drops that beat upon us as we walk. The French say the war has changed the weather. That’s something to think about. It reminds me of the African saying that when elephants fight, the grass suffers. We are some elephants.

Mid-September. We’ve been marching all night. Everywhere we see the signs of a huge buildup: newly erected field hospitals, camouflaged supply dumps, endless columns of soldiers.

We’re somewhere southeast of Saint-Mihiel, just a few miles behind the front and rushing into position. I haven’t slept in two days. At the next rest I should clean my feet but I’m afraid to take off my boots. Sometimes you can’t get them on again. Maybe tomorrow.

A few hours ago we passed one of the naval guns, a fourteen-incher mounted on a railroad car. We also counted fourteen Renault tanks. We argued about which would be worse, being in a tank or a submarine. Most of us preferred the tank, but only slightly.

I vomited yesterday. Daniel feared I had the flu but I think it was just the smells; smells of rotting flesh and chlorine and gas and monkey meat and urine and shit. When no one was looking I pulled out a small bottle of cologne I carry in my pack, opened it and held it just beneath my nose. Then I closed my eyes and fought the tears.

All the trucks run with their lights out. Sometimes we have to stop and push them out of a ditch. Men get run over too, which helps keep you awake.

“Fuck it’s dark!” said Giles, bumping into me.

“Where the hell are the trenches?” asked Page.

“Another mile, maybe,” said Daniel. “The jumping-off points are supposed to be marked with white tape.”

“What?”

“Look for the white tape.”

“Yeah, don’t cross the white tape.”

“Fuck no, I’m not crossing no white tape. Jesus it’s dark out.”

Then our bombardment started, the largest yet that we had witnessed.

“Would you look at that,” said Daniel.

We stared upward at the huge firmament of white and orange and yellow streaks and flashes; a man-made aurora.

“That’s more than a thousand guns, I’ll bet,” said Giles. I watched the light flicker off his face.

“You can’t even count them,” said Page. “It’s like a drumroll.”

We all stood still, watching and listening. The sounds of the explosions were layered on top of each other so that it was impossible to concentrate on any single one.

“At least we’ll be able to see the white lines,” said Daniel.

“Yeah, don’t cross no white lines,” said Lawton.

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

I STEPPED
on an American soldier. I felt something give beneath my feet and heard the breaking of ribs. Or was it a neck? The wheat field was covered with the dead and wounded and I was running headlong in a stampede of men and I could not avoid the bodies of the wounded and dead I could not.

I pray he was dead.

DANIEL NEVER
forgave Lawton for shooting the young German who raised his hands and yelled
“Kamerad!”
as we overran his machine-gun nest in a woods near Thiaucourt. The two other members of his Maxim team were dead beside him and he stood trembling with blood all over his face and his helmet at his feet. Daniel was walking up to him when Lawton raised his rifle and shot him twice in the chest.

“You son of a bitch!” yelled Daniel, grabbing Lawton’s rifle and throwing it to the ground. Then he walked over to where the German lay and knelt beside him, checking his wounds. I stood beside Daniel and looked over his shoulder. The German couldn’t have been any older than fifteen, with a smooth, unshaven face and freckles across the bridge of his nose. I knew he was dead.

“What’s the matter with you, MacGuire? He’s a fucking murdering bastard,” said Lawton, picking up his rifle. “You try raising your hands in the air next time you’re up against one of them. Just try it.”

“He’s a boy,” said Daniel, gently moving the German’s head to one side and searching for a pulse on his neck. “He’s just a boy.”

“GOOD MORNING,
Patrick.”

“Hello, Dr. Tompkins.”

“Feeling all right today?” He was peering down through bifocals at a clipboard in his hands.

“Sure.” I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to get my feet into my shoes.

“You’re taking your medicine?”

“Yes.”

“Is it helping?”

“A bit.”

“Still a lot of pain?”

“Sometimes.”

“The lab results are back.”

“I see. And?”

“Not good, I’m afraid. But we’ve made tremendous progress in pain management.” He began scribbling on his clipboard. “I’m going to try another medicine. Want you to take it three times a day. It may make you—”

“About the lab results… ”

He stopped writing, took off his glasses with one hand, folded them neatly, slid them into the top pocket of his white lab coat and looked at me. “It doesn’t look good.”

“Well, of course not. I’m eighty-one. Nothing looks good.”

He leaned forward and ran his hands along my neck, probing with his fingers. Then I lay back and he undid my shirt and pressed his hands along my abdomen. I winced.

“There?”

“Yes.”

“And there?”

“Yes.”

“How about here. Does this hurt too?”

“Yes.”

After he left I went into the bathroom, stripped off my clothes and stood in the shower with my head under the nozzle. I turned the water temperature up until I could just barely stand it.

It’s too much to bear, all this knowing; this acute self-consciousness. Who can stand it?

I turned off the shower, grabbed a towel and began drying myself.

If only I could sedate myself with amusing notions of self- importance. That’s the trick, isn’t it?

I dressed slowly, double-knotting my shoelaces so I wouldn’t trip.

At least I am finally beginning to understand that all the other anxieties of our lives have a proper and inevitable lineage; that perhaps Julia was right: they are all just misplaced fears of death and decay, of the unshakable dread that we are mere cosmic nutrients, utterly and ridiculously superfluous. That’s why we cling so desperately to religion and art: they are our most profound and eloquent responses to our vile predicament, bold assertions that our lives mean something after all.

I stood before the mirror and combed my hair, then flossed and put on my watch, pausing to wind it. After double-checking that my pants zipper was up, I headed down the hall to the cafeteria, trying to decide between Cheerios and Cornflakes and wondering whether Dr. Tompkins left all his patients in such good cheer.

I CHOSE CHEERIOS
but couldn’t finish the bowl. Now I’m sitting on a bench in the hallway, desperate for a glimpse of Sarah or Janet or Erica; anything to ward off the despair.

It’s this waiting that kills me. More even than the smell and the grayness and the infirmity; all of us waiting like cows in a holding pen, waiting to be shoved and prodded and pulled down the chute into eternity. Every day we are fed and dressed and pushed into common rooms like so much chattel to sit and wait and fart until finally it’s our turn to be spirited away into the darkness, our Johnny coats flapping in the wind.

Death’s inexorable approach puts extraordinary pressure on each day, so much so that instead of enjoying what I have left I simply seize up, unable to bear the tension. I don’t just see the sand slipping through the hourglass I
hear
it, a constant flowing hissing sound that grows louder and louder with each passing hour.

That’s why nothing’s quite so important to the elderly as convincing themselves that they didn’t squander vast chunks of their lives, which of course most of us did, frittering away the days like pocket change, which is why our seething resentments and regrets threaten to engulf us, until each thought begins with, “If only I… ” or “I always wanted to… ” In old age life’s cowardice finally catches up with us. And we recoil at the waste.