Losing Julia (46 page)

I WAITED
for two hours at the Arc de Triomphe, walking back and forth and then sitting at a nearby cafe and drinking three cups of coffee. I thought I saw her once but it was someone else. All I could think of was the sound of her knock on my door and the look on her face with those tears rolling down and the way her skin felt against mine.

When I got back to the hotel there was a note from Charlotte saying that she and Margaret had gone out for lunch and then sight-seeing. Sean was playing with a sitter they had hired, the daughter of the concierge. I paid her and pulled out Sean’s stroller and then took him on a walk through Paris, following the route that Daniel, Page, Lawton and I had taken ten years before.

I WAITED
the next day and the next one too, standing in the cool rain from eleven-thirty a.m. until twelve-thirty p.m., then hurrying back to the hotel to meet Charlotte and Margaret. My matches got wet so I lit one cigarette off the other, until I finished the pack. Still, I was glad that it rained.

I WAS DOZING
on the blue chair in the recreation room, sketchbook on my lap, when Sarah tapped me on the shoulder.

“You’ll miss lunch.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Oh come on now. I’m not going to let you wither away.”

“You can’t stop me from withering away.”

“Now don’t get started.” She sat on the edge of my chair and rested a hand on my shoulder. “I want to ask you something.”

I looked up, slowly grazing my eyes across her neck.

“Jeffrey’s school is having Voices of History Week next month and we—he—was wondering if you might speak.”

“Me? About what?”

“About being a veteran. About the First World War.”

“To fifth graders?”

“It’ll be the whole school and parents are invited too. It would mean a lot to Jeffrey.”

“I’m not much of a speaker.”

“Baloney. You’ll do fine and Jeffrey will be thrilled. It’s three weeks from this Friday. I’ll drive you.”

Our artillery had been bombing that line for six days and nights, trying to smash the German barbed-wire entanglements, but they hadn’t made any impact…

The result was that we never got anywhere near the Germans. Never got anywhere near them. Our lads were mowed down. They were just simply slaughtered.

—W. H. Shaw, British Army.

THE STAGE
was much brighter than I had expected and I had to squint as I sat in a chair near the podium waiting to be introduced by an extremely tall and thin and dire-looking principal named Mrs. Pertosi, who smelled distinctly of Play-Doh. I regretted immediately not bringing my cane. But at least I could hold on to the podium. I pulled out my small notebook from my breast pocket and scanned it, making sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, then glanced down at my fly.

“And now it’s my pleasure to introduce a very special friend of Jeffrey Fields from Miss Meyer’s fifth-grade class. At the robust age of eighty-one, Mr. Patrick Delaney is still going strong some sixty-two years after defending our nation’s values in the First World War, which, in case some of you have forgotten, was the one that came before the Second World War.” Scattered laughter.

“Let’s all extend a big hand to Mr. Delaney.”

The applause was louder than I had expected, which felt good. I stood slowly and headed toward the podium, careful to watch my footing. I shook Mrs. Pertosi’s hand, which was large and damp, and then grabbed on to the podium with both hands to balance myself. The microphone, too high at first, was too low after Mrs. Pertosi’s adjustments. I stooped toward it. “Thank you, yes, thank you.” The room hushed, except for a low drone of coughs and sneezes.

“Well then, war.”

Looking out at all the faces turned up toward me I searched for one I could lock in on, but they all seemed to homogenize into an indistinguishable mass teetering between curiosity and boredom. The stage lights felt warm and excessively bright and I wondered if they were magnified through my glasses, which I’d forgotten to clean.

“Well, perhaps the first thing you should understand is that—contrary to popular belief—the First World War was not conducted in black and white.” Laughter. “Nor, as I try to tell my grandchildren, was my own childhood.” More laughter.

“It’s actually an important point, if you think about it.” Silence. “Maybe some of you have seen old footage of the war. Let me assure you that we did not march that fast.” A few laughs.

“It was early 1918 when I landed in France. The war had been going on since 1914, when Germany invaded Belgium and France for all sorts of complicated reasons. And it was, well, it was like nothing I had ever imagined. Certainly not like the books I’d read with glorious saber charges and all that.”

I felt a stabbing pain in my abdomen.

“There is an old saying that hatred for an enemy increases with distance from the battlefield, and even though we felt the Germans were our enemy, I think that’s true. A Frenchman named Marie-Paul Rimbault once wrote, ‘There’s nothing so like a German soldier in his trench than a French soldier in
his.
They are both poor sods and that’s all there is to it.’ And I can tell you another thing: a dead German soldier looks a hell of a lot like a dead American.”

The faces remained unmoved. Just coughing and the creaking of wooden seats.

Silly, isn’t this Daniel, me standing up here trying to put things into words. I’m no good at this. What should 1 tell them? That war is bad? Well, we can’t have Hitler running the show now can we? That even winning is not that much fun? That war is the best foundry for friendships? That’s an interesting point, isn’t it? That if only war didn’t kill it would be the best thing to happen to most people, showing them how much they need each other, how important every moment and every friend is. But then the war took those friendships away. Shall I tell them that, too? Shall I tell them how war strips everything down to its elemental beauty and horror, so that you can behold every nook and cranny of the human soul? But how?

There was a large blue pitcher of water on the podium and I poured myself a glass, which was difficult because when I picked the pitcher up it felt unexpectedly heavy and the ice cubes came tumbling into my glass much faster than I had anticipated. I used both hands and when I finished I took a sip from the glass and thought of what to say next. When I leaned back toward the microphone the sound system made feedback noises, which stopped when I tapped the microphone with my finger.

“There is one thing that scares soldiers more than dying and that’s being forgotten. Maybe it’s different now but I don’t think so. When World War II started, the War Graves Commission from the First War still hadn’t finished accounting for all the dead. Well, if you ever go to France you’ll see all the cemeteries and monuments, the dead from one war right next to another. It’s quite something, to think that a soldier from the Second World War could take cover behind the headstone of his father who fell in the First War.

“But you’re probably more interested in what the war was like from a soldier’s point of view.” I took another sip of water. “Well, believe it or not it was awfully boring at times. There’s a great deal of marching and waiting around and just trying to keep comfortable. We were in trenches most of the time. Sort of a technological stalemate. Why, a person could walk from the North Sea to Switzerland without poking their nose above ground. The first gas attack—by the Germans—was during the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. Caused terrible panic. The first tanks were used in September 1916 by the British during the Battle of the Somme. But it was really the artillery and the machine gun that ruled the day, though dogfights were something to watch.

“But maybe I should tell you about the stretcher-bearers. There was this young fellow… now what was his name?”

I stopped again and sipped more water. My face felt hot and I wondered if I could ask that the lights be turned down. Was that Jeffrey down there in the front? I looked for Sarah but couldn’t find her.

“Let’s see, where was I? Well, there were different types of gases. Chlorine gas. Phosgene gas. Mustard gas. There was nothing to do for the victims but watch them suffocate. Maybe the best way to tell you about the effects of gas is to read a passage from something I’ve brought along.”

I searched my coat pockets twice before finding the piece of paper folded in an inside pocket. I opened it and laid it flat on the podium, pressing the creases with my palm. “It was written by a nurse. She wrote:

“‘I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war… could see a case—to say nothing of ten cases—of mustard gas in its early stages—could see the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes… all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.’”

I folded the piece of paper and placed it back in my jacket pocket. When I looked out again I could only see the lights. I felt dizzy and leaned hard against the podium.