Good Hope Road: A Novel (38 page)

We victorious, the generals declare. We won. If victory be this, these few metres of land, then we won.

I want bad to smash up somethin’, to bust my fists to the bone. This time, I known better than back in May. I know that after the shakes stop, after we take count of ourselves, we goin’ to find that we left parts of ourselves out there in the mud. Ain’t nothin’ you could see, ain’t nothin’ to gather up and toss into the graves, but there a dirge in my head all the same.

‘
Une bonne mort
.’

I understand fully now what Gaillard been tryin’ to say. Out here, on these killin’ fields, death is good, it be the only good. What left of the livin’, it ain’t fit to be called livin’ at all.

A boxin’ ring keep goin’ in and outta my thoughts, the twisted rope, the pink canopy with electric lights. I don’t pay it no mind at first, but suddenly I think of the Champ. I ’member the way Jack Johnson looked at the Velodrome last year, standin’ in that ring. The stillness in him after he won, the dead emptiness in his eyes as if there weren’t no value in the winnin’, as if there weren’t nothin’ of worth left in all the world.

I think of him, of those flat, tired eyes, filled with all the sadness a man can hold. I think of all we seen, all we done here today, and I want to bury my head in my hands.

A dirge keep playin’ in my head, a long, empty, mournin’-dove call.

A week later, what left of the regiment sent into battle again, defendin’ our line against a Boche counter-offensive. We shelter behind a parapet of corpses. This time, my hands ain’t got the shakes at all.

Them holes we hide inside, they slowly bein’ filled, with cold, dark glass.

Groups of Boche prisoners taken through our lines. Christmas long forgotten as we spit and cuss at them. The Boche officer walkin’ at the head of one of the groups, it as if he can’t hear us none at all. Straight he walk, real tall. Gaillard step up to him, get real close, up in his face. Pullin’ out his knife, he hold it to the Boche’s stomach. We all fallen silent, watchin’. A cut downwards, and he snip off the buttons on the man’s trousers. The officer grab at his pants, strugglin’ to hold them up in front of his men. We start to laugh. That Boche, he look at Gaillard, look at us, straight in the eyes. Holdin’ up his pants at the waist in one hand, he salute us all. He walk past, best he can, in the sudden silence that follow.

Come 4 July, they give the Americans in the Legion a special fortyeight-hour furlough. We leave at once for Paris. I don’t ’member too much of it, ’cept I drank so much, had it not been for James, no way I would have made it back to the Legion in time. I suppose I also gone ruttin’ in places I shouldn’t have, but all of the itchin’ and leakin’ that followed, it weren’t too much worse than the cooties, anyhow.

he observation balloon drift far below and to the right. From where we standin’, on the peak of the Ballon de Servance, it look like a slow, yellow, second sun over the Front.

‘That’s Mont Blanc.’ James point to the huge mountain to the south. ‘And those, the ranges of the Jura.’ He turn east, pointin’ out the Jungfrau, Wetterhorn and other names I ain’t never heard of before, the snow-topped mountains of the Alps.

Just ’bout 4 a.m. when we headed out this mornin’. ‘Whose damn fool idea was this anyway,’ I mutter, thinkin’ to get a rise out of James, but he turned awful quiet since Artois and don’t seem to notice. He ain’t said much on the hike up here either, eighteen kilometres with sacks and full gear.

It only now that he startin’ to talk, as he look around at them mountains. Sure pretty up here. Everythin’ feel real far, the war, the Front. Men are takin’ off what gear they can and fallin’ into the sun-warmed grass. A sharp drop to our right, down into a dark green valley and then the itty-bitty villages and sun-filled plains of the Alsace. A ribbon of a river, catchin’ the sun as it flow. I take a deep, long breath, takin’ in the fresh mountain air. Ain’t no death stink here, just the smell of pine and mountain flowers.

Church bells start to ring somewhere, the air so clear, we hear them all the way up here.

James turn his head, listenin’. ‘The bells here have names,’ he say.

Gaillard stir from where he lyin’ flat in the grass. ‘Must have been ringing in Rodern too. They were standing right by the church, I heard.’

Far as we are from the Front, ain’t no gettin’ away from the war. It was one of the locals in Rodern, we heard tell. A company of legionnaires billeted there, and in the middle of a roll call, he signal to the Boche across the hill. Five lost, includin’ the lieutenant; Ed Bouligny, though, he make it just fine, with only a hole in his coat.

‘I don’t know how to compute the odds of that,’ James say quietly. He spread his hands. ‘Neither the odds of the shelling – the serendipity of their position, the perfect calibration of the shells – nor of Bouligny’s survival.’

The observation balloon sail slowly over the lines far below. A fat, yellow-silk sun, mockin’ the stillness of the day.

Over a month we been in this sector, resting up after Artois in these quiet mountain parts. Ain’t nothin’ much to do here but a bit of drillin’ in the mornin’, and a march now and again to dig second line trenches – always the devil-spawn diggin’ – nearer to the Front. There’s games of Bridge and Manille in the square; we gather at the Cheval Blanc in the afternoons, takin’ in the cool, clean air. James’ eye, it still botherin’ him. He don’t say nothin’, but I seen how he press a pocket square to it to stay the waterin’. Hardly says two words to no one, but least he startin’ to write in that notebook of his again.

I come across a church organ once, on one of my wanderings through the village. It sittin’ there by itself in that old, quiet church. It look so lonesome that I walk over and press a key, another, pleasurin’ in the clear sound of the chords. I ain’t thinkin’ to do it, but I find myself sittin’ down and startin’ to play. I ain’t played no hymn for many years, but this the music that come now to my fingers. A short piece, one I ’member from way back, when Pappy been takin’ me, my hand in his, to church. The notes of that hymn, they fall from my fingers, floatin’ through the empty pews, hangin’ in the light from the stained-glass windows, red and green.

I sit quiet after I’m done, just starin’ at the keys. When I look up, I see an old man, patiently waitin’. ‘Can you play for us?’ he ask. He turn his beat-up hat in his hands. The organ player, he at the Front, he explain, and it been a long time since the townsfolk have had a church service.

I play that Sunday, for him and his wife, and their three poilu boys fightin’ in the war. For their neighbour, a sweet-faced young widow, shadows under her eyes. For the old man we seen pacin’ ’bout his tiny garden. He pace all day, every day, from when reveille sounds till after the stars are out, anxious for news of his son, missin’ since Champagne. For Madame Thibault from the Cheval Blanc. Her face gone bright red, same as when as she dry cloth labels on the counter of her bar. The address on the labels written real careful in capital letters; they meant for the packages she send her nineteen-year-old grandson. He lyin’ in a hospital across the border, both eyes gone, but he alive. As she prepare each parcel, Madame Thibault go bright red from holdin’ in her tears – how can she cry, when she luckier than so many others in the village?

I play for her, for all of them. Legionnaires start to wander in, drawn by the music. James, Gaillard, Karan. They sit off to the sides and at the back, starin’ at the ceilin’ or at the floor.

I play like I never played before, not even needin’ to look at the sheet music. The notes flow like water from my fingers, washin’ away, for a short while, the taint. Faces start to appear in the shadows. James and the others, I know they see them too. Ghost shapes in the walls, fillin’ the pews. All those we lost, them that walk among us still, callin’ out in our dreams. The music, bringing them back. I play on, the notes risin’ and fallin’, risin’ then fallin’, settlin’ around our shoulders like an absolution.

The locals, they leave after the service, but we stay on.

‘They were in a street beside the church.’ Karan’s face hard to see, part in shadow, part in light. ‘Standing right beside the
church
, when they got it.’ He talkin’ ’bout the shellin’ in Rodern.

His voice real flat, like he don’t care one way or another. ‘
Got Mitt Uns
. God’s With Us, isn’t that what the Boche say?’

James stirs. ‘The church bells here have names,’ he say again. ‘Marie Rosalie. Julienne Marguerite Marie. Marie Therese Josephine.’

‘There’s a story told in India.’ The same flat tone to Karan’s voice. ‘An ancient story, dating back two thousand years, maybe more. There was a great war that was fought. A feud within the ruling family, cousins arrayed on either side. When Arjun the warrior prince saw his maternal uncles, a grandfather, his old teachers, the boys he had grown up with as brothers, lined up on the other side of the battlefield, he was overcome by grief. “How can I lift a finger against my own blood?” he asked. “Would this not be the greatest sin?”

‘“It is your destiny as a warrior to fight, Arjun,” Lord Krishna, the blue god, counselled. “To retreat from the battlefield would be cowardice, a mark of impotence that will tarnish your name for all time.”

‘“Better that than to spill the blood of a kinsman,” Arjun replied. He laid down his bow. “Better to live the rest of my life a coward than to stain these hands with the blood of my teachers.”

‘“Why do you fear?” Krishna said then. “The soul is indestructible. The body is born, it dies. It manifests, it is destroyed. What you kill is only the husk – the seed lives for ever. The wise mourn neither the living nor the dead. It is your religious duty to fight. Fight for the
principle
behind the war, without thought of personal victory or defeat. Fight in my name. By doing so, you could never incur sin.”’

Karan smile tightly. ‘In other words, if you fight in the name of God, in the name of good, then go right ahead. Fire at will because it isn’t a sin. But what if
both
sides believe that God is with them?’ His voice rise, echoing through the church. ‘What then is the
point
to all of this, and on whose bloody side is God anyway?’

I’m still tryin’ to work my way through all what he said when Gaillard, who sittin’ by hisself, start to speak.

‘I heard about this attack once,’ he tell, ‘from the colonial troops. They had been stationed in a village when the unit came under a heavy bombardment.
Salaud
Boche, they destroy the place, all the buildings torn down, the whole village turned into stone and dust. When the troops finally crawl out of the cellars, they see this one house that has taken a direct hit. Nothing of it left standing, not the roofs, not the door, nothing at all, except for a single wall. They go closer, and now they see that the wall, that one wall that has been left standing, it’s got a crucifix hanging on it.

‘One of the men says all excited to the group, “Do you see? Do you
see
? Why was this wall saved? Of everything else, why this particular wall? It’s a sign, I tell you, a sign from God himself.”

‘He hurries over, to take a closer look at the crucifix; just as he gets there, the wall collapses right on top of him.