Across the River and Into the Trees Page 17

�You sound like Dante,� she said sleepily.

  �I am Mister Dante,� he said. �For the moment.�

  And for a while he was and he drew all the circles. They were as unjust as Dante�s but he drew them.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  �I WILL skip the detailed part since you are, justifiably, and should be, sleepy,� the Colonel said. He watched, again, the strange play of the light on the ceiling. Then he looked at the girl, who was more beautiful than any girl that he had ever seen, ever.

  He had seen them come and go, and they go faster, when they go, than any other thing that flies. They can go faster from fair beauty to the knocker�s shop than any other animal, he thought. But I believe that this one could hold the pace and stay the course. The dark ones last the best, he thought, and look at the bony structure in that face. This one has a fine blood line too, and she can go forever. Most of our own lovely beauties come from soda counters, and they do not know their grandfather�s last name, unless, maybe, it was Schultz. Or Schlitz, he thought.

  This is the wrong attitude to take, he said to himself; since he did not wish to express any of these sentiments to the girl, who would not like them anyway, and was soundly sleepy now the way a cat is when it sleeps within itself.

  �Sleep well, my dearest lovely, and I will just tell it for nothing.�

  The girl was asleep, still holding his bad hand, that he despised, and he could feel her breathe, as the young breathe when they are easily asleep.

  The Colonel told her all about it; but he did not utter it.

  So after I had the privilege of hearing General Walter Bedell Smith explain the facility of the attack, we made it. There was the Big Red One, who believed their own publicity. There was the Ninth, which was a better Division than we were. There was us, who had always done it when they asked for you to do it.

  We had no time to read comic books, and we had no time for practically nothing, because we always moved before first light. This is difficult and you have to throw away the Big Picture and be a division.

  We wore a four-leaf clover, which meant nothing except among ourselves, who all loved it. And every time I ever see it the same thing happens in my inner guts. Some people thought that it was ivy. But it was not. It was a four-leaf clover disguised as ivy.

  The orders were that we would attack with the Big Red One, the First Infantry Division of the Army of the United States, and they, and their Calypso singing PRO never let you forget it. He was a nice guy. And it was his job.

  But you get fed up with horse-shit unless you like the aroma or the taste. I never liked it. Although I loved to walk through cow-shit when I was a kid and feel it between my toes. But horse-shit bores you. It bores me very rapidly, and I can detect it at over one thousand yards.

  So we attacked, the three of us in line, exactly where the Germans wished us to attack. We will not mention General Walter Bedell Smith any further. He is not the villain. He only made the promises and explained how it would go. There are no villains, I presume, in a Democracy. He was only just as wrong as hell. Period, he added in his mind.

  The patches had all been removed even as far back as the rear echelon so that no Kraut would know that it was us, the three he knew so well, who were going to attack. We were going to attack with the three of us in line and nothing in reserve. I won�t try to explain what that means, Daughter. But it isn�t any good. And the place we were going to fight in, which I had taken a good look at, was going to be Passchendaele with tree bursts. I say that too much. But I think it too much.

  The poor bloody twenty-eighth which was up on our right had been bogged down for some time and so there was pretty accurate information available about what conditions in those woods were going to be like. I think we could conservatively describe them as unfavorable.

  Then we were ordered to commit one regiment before the attack started. That means that the enemy will get at least one prisoner which makes all the taking off of the Divisional patches silly. They would be waiting for us. They would be waiting for the old four leaf clover people who would go straight to hell like a mule and do it for one hundred and five days. Figures of course mean nothing to civilians. Nor to the characters from SHAEF we never saw ever in these woods. Incidentally, and of course these occurrences are always incidental at the SHAEF level, the regiment was destroyed. It was no one�s bloody fault, especially not the fault of the man who commanded it. He was a man I would be glad to spend half my time in hell with; and may yet.

  It certainly would be odd if instead of going to hell, as we always counted on, we should go to one of those Kraut joints like Valhalla and not be able to get along with the people. But maybe we could get a corner table with Rommel and Udet and it would be just like any winter-sports hotel. It will probably be hell though and I don�t even believe in hell.

  Well anyway this regiment was rebuilt as American regiments always are by the replacement system. I won�t describe it since you can always read about it in a book by somebody who was a replacement. It boils down, or distills, to the fact you stay in until you are hit badly or killed or go crazy and get section-eighted. But I guess it is logical and as good as any other, given the difficulties of transport. However it leaves a core of certain un-killed characters who know what the score is and no one of these characters liked the look of these woods much.

  You could sum up their attitude in this phrase, �Don�t shit me, Jack.�

  And since I had been an un-killed character for around twenty-eight years I could understand their attitude. But they were soldiers, so most of them got killed in those woods and when we took the three towns that looked so innocent and were really fortresses. They were just built to tempt us and we had no word on them at all. To continue to use the silly parlance of my trade: this could or could not be faulty intelligence.

  �I feel terribly about the regiment,� the girl said. She had wakened and spoken straight from sleep.

  �Yes,� said the Colonel. �So do I. Let�s drink to it once. Then you go to sleep, Daughter please. The war is over and forgotten.�

  Please don�t think that I am conceited, Daughter, he said, without speaking. His true love was sleeping again. She slept in a different way than his career girl had slept. He did not like to remember how the career girl slept, yes he did. But he wanted to forget it. She did not sleep pretty, he thought. Not like this girl who slept as though she were awake and alive; except she was asleep. Please sleep well, he thought.

  Who the hell are you to criticize career girls? he thought. What miserable career did you attempt and have failed at?

  I wished to be, and was, a General Officer in the Army of the United States. I have failed and I speak badly of all who have succeeded.

  Then his contrition did not last, and he said to himself, �Except the brown-nosers, the five and ten and twenty percenters and all the jerks from wherever who never fought and hold commands.�

  They killed several men from the academy at Gettysburg. That was the big kill day of all kill days, when there was a certain amount of opposition by both sides.

  Don�t be bitter. They killed General McNair by mistake the day the Valhalla Express came over. Quit being bitter. People from the Academy were killed and there are statistics to prove it.

  How can I remember if I am not bitter?

  Be as bitter as you want. And tell the girl, now silently, and that will not hurt her, ever, because she is sleeping so lovely. He said lovely to himself since his thinking was often ungrammatical.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  SLEEP softly, my true love, and when you wake, this will be over and I will joke you out of trying to learn details of the triste m�tier of war and we will go to buy the little negro, or moor, carved in ebony with his fine features, and his jeweled turban. Then you will pin him on, and we will go to have a drink at Harry�s and see whoever or whatever of our friends that will be afoot at that hour.

  We will lunch at Harry�s, or we�ll come back
here, and I will be packed. We will say good-bye and I will get into the motoscafo with Jackson, and make some cheerful crack to the Gran Maestro and wave to any other members of the Order, and ten to one, the way I feel right now, or two will get you thirty, we will not ever see one another again.

  Hell, he said to no one, and certainly not aloud, I�ve felt this way before many fights and almost always at some time in the fall of the year, and always when leaving Paris. Probably it doesn�t mean a thing.

  Who gives a damn anyway except me and the Gran Maestro and this girl; I mean at command level.

  I give very much of a damn myself. But I certainly should be trained and adjusted by this time not to give a muck for nothing; like the definition of a whore. A woman who does not etc.

  But we won�t think about that boy, lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, general sir. We will just lay it on the line once more and the hell with it, and with its ugly face that old Hieronymus Bosch really painted. But you can sheathe your scythe, old brother death, if you have got a sheath for it. Or, he added, thinking of Hurtgen now, you can take your scythe and stick it up your ass.

  It was Passchendaele with tree bursts, he told nobody except the wonder light on the ceiling. Then he looked at the girl, to see that she was sleeping well enough so even his thoughts would not hurt her.

  Then he looked at the portrait and he thought, I have her in two positions, lying down, turned a little on her side, and looking at me straight in front. I�m a lucky son of a bitch and I should never be sad about anything.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  THE first day there, we lost the three battalion commanders. One killed in the first twenty minutes and the other two hit later. This is only a statistic to a journalist. But good battalion commanders have never yet grown on trees; not even Christmas trees which was the basic tree of that woods. I do not know how many times we lost company commanders how many times over. But I could look it up.

  They aren�t made, nor grown, as fast as a crop of potatoes is either. We got a certain amount of replacements but I can remember thinking that it would be simpler, and more effective, to shoot them in the area where they detrucked, than to have to try to bring them back from where they would be killed and bury them. It takes men to bring them back, and gasoline, and men to bury them. These men might just as well be fighting and get killed too.

  There was snow, or something, rain or fog, all the time and the roads had been mined as many as fourteen mines deep in certain stretches, so when the vehicles churned down to a new string deeper, in another part of the mud, you were always losing vehicles and, of course, the people that went with them.

  Besides just mortaring it all to hell and having all the fire-lanes taped for machine gun, and automatic weapon fire, they had the whole thing worked out and canalized so however you out-thought them you ran right into it. They also shelled you with heavy artillery fire and with at least one railway gun.

  It was a place where it was extremely difficult for a man to stay alive even if all he did was be there. And we were attacking all the time, and every day.

  Let�s not think about it. The hell with it. Maybe two things I will think about and get rid of them. One was a bare-assed piece of hill that you had to cross to get into Grosshau.

  Just before you had to make this run, which was under observation with fire by 88�s, there was a little piece of dead ground where they could only hit you with a howitzer, only interdicting fires, or, from the right by mortar. When we cleaned it up we found they had good observation for their mortars there too.

  This was a comparatively safe place, I�m really not lying, not me nor anybody else. You can�t fool those that were in Hurtgen, and if you lied they would know it the minute you opened your mouth, Colonel or no Colonel.

  We met a truck at this place and slowed up, and he had the usual gray face and he said, �Sir, there is a dead GI in the middle of the road up ahead, and every time any vehicle goes through they have to run over him, and I�m afraid it is making a bad impression on the troops.�

  �We�ll get him off the road.�

  So we got him off the road.

  And I can remember just how he felt, lifting him, and how he had been flattened and the strangeness of his flatness.

  Then there was one other thing, I remember. We had put an awful lot of white phosphorus on the town before we got in for good, or whatever you would call it. That was the first time I ever saw a German dog eating a roasted German kraut. Later on I saw a cat working on him too. It was a hungry cat, quite nice looking, basically. You wouldn�t think a good German cat would eat a good German soldier, would you Daughter? Or a good German dog eat a good German soldier�s ass which had been roasted by white phosphorus.

  How many could you tell like that? Plenty, and what good would they do? You could tell a thousand and they would not prevent war. People would say we are not fighting the krauts and besides the cat did not eat me nor my brother Gordon, because he was in the Pacific. Maybe land crabs ate Gordon. Or maybe he just deliquesced.

  In Hurtgen they just froze up hard; and it was so cold they froze up with ruddy faces. Very strange. They all were gray and yellow like wax-works, in the summer. But once the winter really came they had ruddy faces.

  Real soldiers never tell any one what their own dead looked like, he told the portrait. And I�m through with this whole subject. And what about that company dead up the draw? What about them, professional soldier?

  They�re dead, he said. And I can hang and rattle.

  Now who would join me in a glass of Valpolicella? What time do you think I should wake your opposite number, you girl? We have to get to that jewelry place. And I look forward to making jokes and to talking of the most cheerful things.

  What�s cheerful, portrait? You ought to know. You�re smarter than I am, although you haven�t been around as much.

  All right, canvas girl, the Colonel told her, not saying it aloud, we�ll drop the whole thing and in eleven minutes I will wake the live girl up, and we will go out on the town, and be cheerful and leave you here to be wrapped.

  I didn�t mean to be rude. I was just joking roughly. I don�t wish to be rude ever because I will be living with you from now on. I hope, he added, and drank a glass of the wine.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  IT was a sharp, cold bright day, and they stood outside the window of the jeweler�s shop and studied the two small negro heads and torsos that were carved in ebony and adorned with studded jewels. One was as good as the other, the Colonel thought.

  �Which do you like the best, Daughter?�

  �I think the one on the right. Don�t you think he has the nicer face?�

  �They both have nice faces. But I think I would rather have him attend you if it was the old days.�

  �Good. We�ll take him. Let�s go in and see them. I must ask the price.�

  �I will go in.�

  �No, let me ask the price. They will charge me less than they would charge you. After all you are a rich American.�

  �Et toi, Rimbaud?�

  �You�d make an awfully funny Verlaine,� the girl told him. �We�ll be some other famous characters.�

  �Go on in, Majesty, and we�ll buy the god damn jewel.�

  �You wouldn�t make a very good Louis Sixteenth either.�

  �I�d get up in that tumbril with you and still be able to spit.�

  �Let�s forget all the tumbrils and everyone�s sorrows, and buy the small object and then we can walk to Cipriani�s and be famous people.�

  Inside the shop they looked at the two heads and she asked the price, and then, there was some very rapid talk and the price was much lower. But still it was more money than the Colonel had.

  �I�ll go to Cipriani�s and get some money.�

  �No,� the girl said. Then to the clerk, �Put it in a box and send it to Cipriani�s and say the Colonel said to pay for it and hold it for him.�

  �Please,� the clerk said. �Exactly as
you say.�

  They went out into the street and the sunlight and the unremitting wind.

  �By the way,� the Colonel said. �Your stones are in the safe at the Gritti in your name.�

  �Your stones.�

  �No,� he told her, not rough, but to make her understand truly. �There are some things that a person cannot do. You know about that. You cannot marry me and I understand that, although I do not approve it.�

  �Very well,� the girl said. �I understand. But would you take one for a lucky stone?�

  �No. I couldn�t. They are too valuable.�

  �But the portrait has value.�

  �That is different.�

  �Yes,� she agreed. �I suppose so. I think I begin to understand.�

  �I would accept a horse from you, if I was poor and young, and riding very well. But I could not take a motor-car.�

  �I understand it now very well. Where can we go now, at this minute, where you can kiss me?�

  �In this side alley, if you know no one who lives in it.�

  �I don�t care who lives in it. I want to feel you hold me tight and kiss me.�

  They turned into the side street and walked toward its blind end.

  �Oh, Richard,� she said. �Oh, my dear.�

  �I love you.�

  �Please love me.�

  �I do.�

  The wind had blown her hair up and around his neck and he kissed her once more with it beating silkily against both his cheeks.

  Then she broke away, suddenly, and hard, and looked at him, and said, �I suppose we had better go to Harry�s.�

  �I suppose so. Do you want to play historical personages?�

  �Yes,� she said. �Let us play that you are you and I am me.�

  �Let�s play,� the Colonel said.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  THERE was no one in Harry�s except some early morning drinkers that the Colonel did not know, and two men that were doing business at the back of the bar.

  There were hours at Harry�s when it filled with the people that you knew, with the same rushing regularity as the tide coming in at Mont St. Michel. Except, the Colonel thought, the hours of the tides change each day with the moon, and the hours at Harry�s are as the Greenwich Meridian, or the standard meter in Paris, or the good opinion the French military hold of themselves.

  �Do you know any of these morning drinkers?� he asked the girl.

  �No. I am not a morning drinker so I have never met them.�

  �They will be swept out when the tide comes in.�

  �No. They will leave, just as it comes, of their own accord.�

  �Do you mind being here out of season?�

  �Did you think I was a snob because I come from an old family? We�re the ones who are not snobs. The snobs are what you call jerks, and the people with all the new money. Did you ever see so much new money?�