Bellagrand: A Novel (14 page)

“Here I am simplicity itself,” he says. “I have so few needs, so few wants.” He catches his breath when he says it, almost as if to stop himself. She waits. He is silent. “I have
some
wants,” he says, almost whispers.

“Me too,” she says, almost whispers.

“But I am pared down to my most basic elements. I’ve got to rise above the purely elemental, don’t you agree?”

She doesn’t know if she agrees. She fears she doesn’t. She tries not to glance above his head where the hands of the clock are stopped motionless, as if dead.

May the Lord remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings. May He give you the desire of your heart.

Two

GINA HAD NEVER SEEN
anyone get as animated and lost in the topic of conversation as Ben when he was talking about his years in Panama.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. Harry would get the same intense, faraway look, maintain the same consuming focus when they would talk about harmonizing the world, remaking it into the image of what he thought it should be and not what it was. And though she still, as always, admired Harry’s learned passion, she had heard all she could stand for the time being about the Reeds and the Debs and the Haywoods. What she wanted to hear about was Panama.

“All forest and mountains. Impassable forest combined with tropical temperatures. And mountains like a spine. I should’ve just thrown up my hands. We couldn’t get a canal from north to south to connect. We excavated, we dammed off the Chagres, we built a lake. We worked from two seas inland, from Cristobal to Miraflores into the center of the country, we were diligent as beavers, and when we designed and built the concrete locks that moved the sea levels up and down, I thought there was nothing harder than that or more accomplished than that. Until we got to the Continental Divide. There was no river, no water, no field, no stream. It was just mountain.” Ben shook his head.

Gina shook hers. “I don’t know how you did it. I still don’t understand it.”

“Me neither.”

“But seriously.”

“We blew it up.”

She laughed.

“I’m not being metaphorical. Or rhetorical. We actually blew it up.”

“You blew up a mountain?”

“We drilled holes, placed explosives in the holes, and detonated the mountain, yes. After the rubble settled, we used enormous steam-powered shovels to load the loose rock onto freight trains, which carted it away to landfills.”

Gina exclaimed in frightened but impressed astonishment. “You must have had to drill a lot of holes to make a valley in a mountain, no?”

“Six hundred holes a day,” Ben said. “We drilled the holes and detonated twice a day. Then the trains would come. So we had to build a railroad and lay new tracks constantly as the valley got longer and wider.”

“Oh, my word. How long did this valley become?” It was called the Culebra Cut.

“Nine miles.”

“Ben!”

“What? Too long or too short?”

“Impossible!”

“That’s what everyone said to my boss, Colonel Gaillard, the most gallant and patient of men. What you’re doing, it will never work, they said to him. It had been my honor to work with that dedicated, quiet man side by side, but I can’t tell you how often he expressed his doubts to me, how often he would say, This is just a fool’s errand, isn’t it, Mr. Shaw, what we’re attempting here? To move a mountain to let ships pass through? And I would reply, despite my gravest doubts, no, Colonel Gaillard. We must succeed, and so we shall.”

“The newspapers were merciless,” Gina said. “It will never work, they wrote, just like it didn’t with the French. It will cost tens of thousands of lives, like it did with the French. This is a waste of human and material resources.”

Ben sighed, as if even success in the present was not sufficient to gloss over the monumental crises in the past. “It was the Culebra Cut that had felled the French.” He shrugged. “They were trying to excavate too high. Sixty meters above sea level was too high for the valley. We made it only twelve feet above. That was better.”

“Not good, but better?”

“Not good, but better. This is one of the reasons I’m cautious and not yet fully optimistic. I know what it took. And that was before the landslides.”

“The what?”

“Oh, yes,” Ben said. “We at Army Corps told everyone to beware of the landslides. Gaillard was very afraid of them. But the International Board of Engineers overseeing the project decreed we had nothing to worry about. They had deemed the Divide sufficiently stable. Except they didn’t count on water from the rains infiltrating a previously impregnable mountain. This, of course, caused a weakening and then a mass wasting of half a million cubic yards of clay.”

“Ben!”

“Oh yes. And this clay was too soft to be excavated by our steam shovels.”

“Like a mud volcano.” Gina recalled the mighty and fearsome Etna, what it was like living under the volcanic threat her entire childhood. Yet she didn’t feel as afraid then as she sometimes felt now in her folk Victorian on Summer Street.

Ben glanced at her approvingly. “Except we can’t have a tropical glacier made of mud lying in the path of our ocean liners, can we?”

“Mud lying in the path of civilization? Certainly not. So what did you do?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “What could we do? We climbed the mountain, sluiced the clay down with water from great heights, and continued detonating.”

She was thoughtful. “But won’t water keep getting into the rock? How are you going to keep the torrential rains from coming? Are you going to control the skies as well as the seas?”

“Clearly we’re not. This will continue to be a problem.”

“I read that just last month the canal closed for a week because of another landslide.”

“Yes, the canal will continue to close intermittently so the falling debris can be cleared. No way around it.”

She patted his arm affectionately, and quickly withdrew when she realized that etiquette had been breached.

“I heard the valley is going to be renamed after your general?”

“Colonel.”

“What’s the difference?”

Ben laughed. “Right. But yes, next year it’ll be called the Gaillard Cut.”

“Such a shame he didn’t live long enough to see the canal completed,” Gina said. David Gaillard died of a brain tumor in 1913.

Ben stopped smiling. “I even grew a bushy mustache in his honor. I shaved it before I returned home,” he added when she stared at the smooth skin between his nose and mouth. “He was a West Point man. Which may explain why he succeeded where others had failed.”

She resisted the impulse to touch him again, though he looked exhausted by the exertions of his memories. “You certainly did make the dirt fly, didn’t you?”

They walked on, lost in their thoughts. They were headed back to the Wayside after a three-mile excursion to buy a few apples.

“So was it worth it?” she asked.

“Was what worth it?”

“The toil, the sacrifice of blood and men, time away from home, sickness, misery. Are you crowned in glory? I mean, from my perspective, it seems a monumental achievement, almost like a miracle. But what do you think?”

“From an engineering and technological standpoint, without a doubt,” he said. “And no one but us could’ve done it, by the way. It was the American heavy machinery that made it happen, and we only had the steam shovels and the trains and the excavators because we spent the last sixty years building railroads across this nation. So in that regard, to build the canal through fog and mountain, to dam rivers, to raise the seas, to divide the Divide, it
is
a feat of civilization. But we didn’t build it just to build it. We built it so it could change the path of mankind. And perhaps it’s too soon to answer your question—was it worth it? First we must gauge the impact it’ll have on the world, on war, on the world at war, on the economies and standard of living of distant countries, on the living conditions and life span of sailors and navies. Clearly I hope that the answer is yes. But ask me again in fifteen years. If I haven’t keeled over by then from the mosquitoes and the sandflies.”

“Let’s shake on it,” said Gina. But she did not extend her roughened hand, even in jest. And he knew she wouldn’t, for he made no movement toward her. Only his eyes gleamed at the possibility of being in touch with her in fifteen years. Well, why not, reasoned Gina. It was over fifteen years ago when they had first met, and here they were, though under vastly different circumstances.

“Why don’t we take a drive to a pumpkin farm next Sunday afternoon?”

“Why would I want to go there?”

“Because it might be an enjoyable way to spend a few hours. We can go pumpkin picking. There might be hot mulled cider. Sometimes they have sack races. We could race and beat the very small children. You get to weave your own basket. You learn to make pumpkin butter.”

“Ugh.”

“Apple butter?”

“Better.”

“There is a corn maze.”

“I don’t like mazes. I always get lost.”

“I never get lost. You can come with me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I have so much work at Rose’s. We’ve taken too long today as it is. We walked nearly to Walden Pond! We haven’t been very good workers on Sundays, I’m afraid.”

“You’re right. But even the good Lord rested on Sunday.”

Feebly she protested. “But even on the Sabbath you have to take care of the sick. The Lord didn’t rest when there was work to be done, did He? And . . . Rose has been chiding me for my absentmindedness, for my derelictions. I don’t want to displease her. It’s like displeasing God.”

“Come on,” Ben said. “The world is not a sad and solemn place.” He took hold of her calloused hand. “Don’t fret. Be glad like the belle of Belpasso. Be glad in the trees and the silence. Come to the maze with me.”

“You know there is nothing like that we can do except dream it.” She had been soaking her hands in milk every night to lessen the visible hurt of her work. Perhaps Ben didn’t notice they still felt like sandpaper.

“We can do anything,” he said. “For a few hours on Sunday, even the weary can sing in the trees. Even monkeys eat red bananas and have bliss.”

“Ben . . .”

“Don’t Ben me. Just say you’ll come with me.”

Three

SUNDAY FROM NOON TO TWO
.

Harry asks if she brought him the newspaper.

Gina hands him the newspaper.

He leafs through it purposefully. He is clean-shaven. When she asks why he always shaves, he says they make him shave on Sundays. It’s God’s day, they tell him. It’s also visitors’ day. They want me to look my best for you, with my prison pajamas and my clean-shaven face.

She wants to ask if she looks her best for him. She wears a white crepe de chine blouse and a plaid fitted skirt. He likes it best when she wears fitted styles to emphasize on her the things that he used to murmur he loved. Her tapered waist. Her long arms and legs. Her slender hips. Her high breasts. Her smooth neck like royalty’s, the throat he loves to lay his lips upon.

His gray eyes are not full of bliss. They’re sad and solemn, and they barely glance at her as he reads, as he holds out his hand for a smoke, the ring gone from his finger a long time. There are scrapes and scratches on his knotted knuckles she hasn’t seen before. She wants to reach across the partition and take his hand, but he is holding the newspaper.

The hour passes. Another conjugal Sunday with Harry. Like Mass earlier in the day: the liturgy, the supplication, the sermon, the presentation of gifts, the laments. The dry Communion. The guard calls time. Gina stands for Harry, as earlier she stood for Jesus, and collects her bag.

He stares at the newspaper for another moment. Then he gets up too.

I’ll see you next Sunday, okay,
mio marito
? she says. Be well. She bows her head.

Don’t forget to bring me the newspaper.

Of course. I won’t forget.

Last week you forgot.

Ah. Yes. I’m sorry. I won’t forget.

Is it cold out? He glances at the light coat she has put on, the thin crepe beige wool.

It’s crisp. Not too cold yet.

The leaves?

They’re falling.

Mimoo?

She is good.

Are you still with Rose?

On the weekends, yes.

He is silent for just one moment too long. You don’t work in these clothes, do you? he says. His eyes are on her white silk blouse.

No, I change to come see you.

He nods. You always look so fresh, as if you just ran in from outside.

I did, she says, run in from outside.

They stand face to face, the table, the barrier between them. They blink at each other, wary, affectionate, sorrowful.

Have you heard from Purdy?

Not yet, she says. But last time I saw him, he said it all looked good for Christmas.

Now it’s really time for her to go. His hand squeezes into a fist.

So what words of wisdom does our holy Rose have for me this week?

Gina puts on her hat, ties the silk ribbons under her chin. He doesn’t take his eyes off her.

There can be art and love
, Rose says,
but art and economics are mutually exclusive
.

Harry nods, as if he approves. But not economics and war, he says. Because millions of boys are about to be slaughtered for economics. Perhaps someone will draw a picture of the carnage. Then they can call it art.

She turns to leave. He turns to leave. At the door she turns to glance at him one last time. He has already turned. She sees his eyes on her, profound, somber, unwilling to let her go. She raises her gloved fingers to her lips and blows him a lingering kiss. He disappears through the steel-reinforced door. Slowly she leaves too, flagellating herself with another thing Rose said:
Those whose hands are pure don’t need to glove them
.

Because the pumpkin farm and the corn maze await.

Four

WHILE THE SUGAR MAPLES
in Concord looked as if they were on fire under the sun, Gina finished her Saturday duties at the Wayside and changed into a slim, embroidered, above-the-ankle, rust-colored crepe day dress with a lace collar. It had a black velvet belt and silk appliqué. Her nails were painted a rust color also. Her wavy hair was piled expertly, fake-casually atop her head. She put on gold hoop earrings and wore bracelets on her wrists. She covered herself with a wool cape and walked out through the gate and into the street where Ben was waiting.