The Thorn Birds (59 page)

They stood staring at each other, able to see. The German soldier saw a very tall man with a fine face and blue, discerning eyes; Archbishop Ralph saw a child tricked out in the garb which all of Europe found fearsome and awe-inspiring. A child; no more than sixteen years old, certainly. Of average height and youthfully thin, he had a frame promising later bulk and strength, and very long arms. His face had rather an Italianate cast, dark and patrician, extremely attractive; wide, dark brown eyes with long black lashes, a magnificent head of wavy black hair. There was nothing usual or ordinary about him after all, even if his role was an ordinary one; in spite of the fact that he had longed to talk to an average, ordinary man, His Grace was interested.

“Sit down,” he said to the boy, crossing to a chest and unearthing a bottle of Marsala wine. He poured some into two glasses, gave the boy one and took his own to a chair from which he could watch the fascinating countenance comfortably. “Are they reduced to drafting children to do their fighting?” he asked, crossing his legs.

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “I was in a children’s home, so I’d be taken early anyway.”

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Rainer Moerling Hartheim,” said the boy, rolling it out with great pride.

“A magnificent name,” said the priest gravely.

“It is, isn’t it? I chose it myself. They called me Rainer Schmidt at the home, but when I went into the army I changed it to the name I’ve always wanted.”

“You were an orphan?”

“The Sisters called me a love child.”

Archbishop Ralph tried not to smile; the boy had such dignity and self-possession, now he had lost his fear. Only what had frightened him? Not being found, or being locked in the basilica.

“Why were you so frightened, Rainer?”

The boy sipped his wine gingerly, looked up with a pleased expression. “Good, it’s sweet.” He made himself more comfortable. “I wanted to see Saint Peter’s because the Sisters always used to talk about it and show us pictures. So when they posted us to Rome I was glad. We got here this morning. The minute I could, I came.” He frowned. “But it wasn’t as I had expected. I thought I’d feel closer to Our Lord, being in His own Church. Instead it was only enormous and cold. I couldn’t feel Him.”

Archbishop Ralph smiled. “I know what you mean. But Saint Peter’s isn’t really a church, you know. Not in the sense most churches are. Saint Peter’s is
the
Church. It took me a long time to get used to it, I remember.”

“I wanted to pray for two things,” the boy said, nodding his head to indicate he had heard but that it wasn’t what he wished to hear.

“For the things which frighten you?”

“Yes. I thought being in Saint Peter’s might help.”

“What are the things which frighten you, Rainer?”

“That they’ll decide I’m a Jew, and that my regiment will be sent to Russia after all.”

“I see. No wonder you’re frightened. Is there indeed a possibility they’ll decide you’re a Jew?”

“Well, look at me!” said the boy simply. “When they were writing down my particulars they said they’d have to check. I don’t know if they can or not, but I suppose the Sisters might know more than they ever told me.”

“If they do, they’ll not pass it on,” said His Grace comfortingly. “They’ll know why they’re being asked.”

“Do you really think so? Oh, I hope so!”

“Does the thought of having Jewish blood disturb you?”

“What my blood is doesn’t matter,” said Rainer. “I was born a German, that’s the only important thing.”

“Only they don’t look at it like that, do they?”

“No.”

“And Russia? There’s no need to worry about Russia now, surely. You’re in Rome, the opposite direction.”

“This morning I heard our commander saying we might be sent to Russia after all. It isn’t going well there.”

“You’re a child,” said Archbishop Ralph abruptly. “You ought to be in school.”

“I wouldn’t be now anyway.” The boy smiled. “I’m sixteen, so I’d be working.” He sighed. “I would have liked to keep going to school. Learning is important.”

Archbishop Ralph started to laugh, then got up and refilled the glasses. “Don’t take any notice of me, Rainer. I’m not making any sense. Just thoughts, one after the other. It’s my hour for them, thoughts. I’m not a very good host, am I?”

“You’re all right,” said the boy.

“So,” said His Grace, sitting down again. “Define yourself, Rainer Moerling Hartheim.”

A curious pride settled on the young face. “I’m a German, and a Catholic. I want to make Germany a place where race and religion won’t mean persecution, and I’m going to devote my life to that end, if I live.”

“I shall pray for you—that you live, and succeed.”

“Would you?” asked the boy shyly. “Would you really pray for me personally, by name?”

“Of course. In fact, you’ve taught me something. That in my business there is only one weapon at my disposal—prayer. I have no other function.”

“Who are you?” asked Rainer, the wine beginning to make him blink drowsily.

“I’m Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart.”

“Oh! I thought you were an ordinary priest!”

“I
am
an ordinary priest. Nothing more.”

“I’ll strike a bargain with you!” said the boy, his eyes sparkling. “You pray for me. Father, and if I live long enough to get what I want, I’ll come back to Rome to let you see what your prayers have done.”

The blue eyes smiled tenderly. “All right, it’s a bargain. And when you come, I’ll tell you what
I
think happened to my prayers.” He got up. “Stay there, little politician. I’ll find you something to eat.”

They talked until dawn glowed round the domes and campaniles, and the wings of pigeons whirred outside the window. Then the Archbishop conducted his guest through the public rooms of the palace, watching his awe with delight, and let him out into the cool, fresh air. Though he didn’t know it, the boy with the splendid name was indeed to go to Russia, carrying with him a memory oddly sweet and reassuring: that in Rome, in Our Lord’s own Church, a man was praying for him every day, by name.

By the time the Ninth was ready to be shipped to New Guinea, it was all over bar the mopping up. Disgruntled, the most elite division in Australian military history could only hope there might be further glory to amass somewhere else, chasing the Japanese back up through Indonesia. Guadalcanal had defeated all Japanese hopes in the drive for Australia. And yet, like the Germans, they yielded bitterly, grudgingly. Though their resources were pitifully stretched, their armies foundering from lack of supplies and reinforcements, they made the Americans and the Australians pay for every inch they gained back. In retreat, the Japanese abandoned Buna, Gona, Salamaua, and slipped back up the north coast, to Lae and Finschafen.

On the fifth of September 1943 the Ninth Division was landed from the sea just east of Lae. It was hot, the humidity was 100 percent, and it rained every afternoon though The Wet wasn’t due for another two full months. The threat of malaria meant everyone was taking Atabrine, and the little yellow tablets made everyone feel as sick as if they had the actual malaria. Already the constant moisture meant permanently damp boots and socks; feet were becoming spongy, the flesh between the toes raw and bloody. Mocka and mosquito bites turned angry, ulcerated.

In Port Moresby they had seen the wretched state of the New Guinea natives, and if they couldn’t stand the climate without developing yaws, beriberi, malaria, pneumonia, chronic skin diseases, enlarged livers and spleens, there wasn’t much hope for the white man. There were survivors of Kokoda in Port Moresby as well, victims not so much of the Japanese but of New Guinea, emaciated, masses of sores, delirious with fever. Ten times as many had died from pneumonia nine thousand feet up in freezing cold wearing thin tropical kit as died from the Japanese. Greasy dank mud, unearthly forests which glowed with cold pale spectral light after dark from phosphorescent fungi, precipitous climbs over a gnarled tangle of exposed roots which meant a man couldn’t look up for a second and was a sitting duck for a sniper. It was about as different from North Africa as any place could get, and the Ninth wasn’t a bit sorry it had stayed to fight the two Alameins instead of Kokoda Trail.

Lae was a coastal town amid heavily forested grasslands, far from the eleven-thousand-foot elevations of the deep interior, and far more salubrious as a battle-ground than Kokoda. Just a few European houses, a petrol pump, and a collection of native huts. The Japanese were as ever game, but few in number and impoverished, as worn out from New Guinea as the Australians they had been fighting, as disease ridden. After the massive ordnance and extreme mechanization of North Africa it was strange never to see a mortar or a fieldpiece; just Owen guns and rifles, with bayonets in place all the time. Jims and Patsy liked hand-to-hand fighting, they liked to go in close together, guard each other. It was a terrible comedown after the Afrika Korps, though, there was no doubt about it. Pint-size yellow men who all seemed to wear glasses and have buck teeth. They had absolutely no martial panache.

Two weeks after the Ninth landed at Lae, there were no more Japanese. It was, for spring in New Guinea, a very beautiful day. The humidity had dropped twenty points, the sun shone out of a sky suddenly blue instead of steamily white, the watershed reared green, purple and lilac beyond the town. Discipline had relaxed, everyone seemed to be taking the day off to play cricket, walk around, tease the natives to make them laugh and display their blood-red, toothless gums, the result of chewing betel nut. Jims and Patsy were strolling through the tall grass beyond the town, for it reminded them of Drogheda; it was the same bleached, tawny color, and long the way Drogheda grass was after a season of heavy rain.

“Won’t be long now until we’re back, Patsy,” said Jims. “We’ve got the Nips on the run, and Jerry, too. Home, Patsy, home to Drogheda! I can hardly wait.”

“Yair,” said Patsy.

They walked shoulder to shoulder, much closer than was permissible between ordinary men; they would touch each other sometimes, not consciously but as a man touches his own body, to relieve a mild itch or absently assure himself it is still all there. How nice it was to feel genuinely sunny sun on their faces instead of a molten ball in a Turkish bath! Every so often they would lift their muzzles to the sky, flare their nostrils to take in the scent of hot light on Drogheda-like grass, dream a little that they were back there, walking toward a wilga in the daze of noon to lie down through the worst of it, read a book, drowse. Roll over, feel the friendly, beautiful earth through their skins, sense a mighty heart beating away down under somewhere, like a mother’s heart to a sleepy baby.

“Jims! Look! A dinkum Drogheda budgie!” said Patsy, shocked into speaking.

Perhaps budgerigars were natives of the Lae country, too, but the mood of the day and this quite unexpected reminder of home suddenly triggered a wild elation in Patsy. Laughing, feeling the grass tickling his bare legs, he took off after it, snatching his battered slouch hat from his head and holding it out as if he truly believed he could snare the vanishing bird. Smiling, Jims stood watching him.

He was perhaps twenty yards away when the machine gun ripped the grass to flying shreds around him; Jims saw his arms go up, his body spin round so that the arms seemed stretched out in supplication. From waist to knees he was brilliant blood, life’s blood.

“Patsy, Patsy!” Jims screamed; in every cell of his own body he felt the bullets, felt himself ebbing, dying.

His legs opened in a huge stride, he gained momentum to run, then his military caution asserted itself and he dived headlong into the grass just as the machine gun opened up again.

“Patsy, Patsy, are you all right?” he cried stupidly, having seen that blood.

Yet incredibly, “Yair,” came a faint answer.

Inch by inch Jims dragged himself forward through the fragrant grass, listening to the wind, the rustlings of his own progress.

When he reached his brother he put his head against the naked shoulder, and wept.

“Break it down,” said Patsy. “I’m not dead yet.”

“How bad is it?” Jims asked, pulling down the blood-soaked shorts to see blood-soaked flesh, shivering.

“Doesn’t feel as if I’m going to die, anyway.”

Men had appeared all around them, the cricketers still wearing their leg pads and gloves; someone went back for a stretcher while the rest proceeded to silence the gun at the far side of the clearing. The deed was done with more than usual ruthlessness, for everyone was fond of Harpo. If anything happened to him, Jims would never be the same.

A beautiful day; the budgerigar had long gone, but other birds trilled and twittered fearlessly, silenced only during the actual battle.

“Patsy’s bloody lucky,” said the medic to Jims some time later. “There must be a dozen bullets in him, but most of them hit the thighs. The two or three higher up seem to have embedded themselves in pelvic bone or muscle. As far as I can judge, his gut’s in one piece, so is his bladder. The only thing is…”

“Well, what?” Jims prompted impatiently; he was still shaking, and blue around the mouth.

“Difficult to say anything for certain at this stage, of course, and I’m not a genius surgeon like some of the blokes in Moresby. They’ll be able to tell you a lot more. But the urethra has been damaged, so have many of the tiny little nerves in the perineum. I’m pretty sure he can be patched up as good as new, except maybe for the nerves. Nerves don’t patch up too well, unfortunately.” He cleared his throat. “What I’m trying to say is that he might never have much sensation in the genital region.”

Jims dropped his head, looked at the ground through a crystal wall of tears. “At least he’s alive,” he said.

He was granted leave to fly to Port Moresby with his brother, and to stay until Patsy was pronounced out of danger. The injuries were little short of miraculous. Bullets had scattered all around the lower abdomen without penetrating it. But the Ninth medic had been right; lower pelvic sensation was badly impaired. How much he might regain later on no one was prepared to say.