A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

  Safe in the greenery, under a canopy of blue, Alessandro watched the birds flit by in momentary ribbons of blurred color, but over the horizon the action that bent the suffering air shook him awake as if from a dream. Though he could feel the end approaching—the end of the familiar, the rearrangement of the elements of beauty, the death of his family, and his own death—he believed that as night pressed its ever-expanding claim, the things in which he placed his faith would assume their brightest mantles and come most alive. Even the silent things would sing, and fight their undoing by rising up before it to their full and greatest height. After suffering must come redemption. Of this he had no doubt.

  A WEEK on the road had made Enrico lean and half wild. When they crossed the Tiber Alessandro had difficulty holding him back, for the horse knew the road and strengthened with each familiar turn. Knowing that his stable at the Porta San Pancrazio was just at the top of the Gianicolo, where he had been born and where the air was perfectly familiar, Enrico bolted forward and took Alessandro to the top of the second-highest hill in Rome as if he were a bird rising out of control in a storm.

  Once, Alessandro had come home after having ridden for weeks on hot dusty roads, and had announced his arrival by firing a pistol in the air as he came up the hill to his house. Now he merely knocked at the door.

  When his mother greeted him she did not have her customary energy, and she pulled him into the reception room and closed the door behind them.

  "Why are you home?" she whispered.

  "What's wrong?" he asked. "Am I not supposed to be home?"

  "Your father isn't well. He mustn't be upset. Have you been expelled?"

  "How could I be expelled?" Alessandro asked, never failing to be astonished that his mother, who had had no formal education, did not understand that getting rid of doctoral candidates was a process equivalent to starving a plant rather than obliterating it, and that it never took less than five or ten years. "What's the matter with him?" he asked.

  "His heart isn't well," his mother said, clutching her own heart. "He has to rest for a month, and not climb stairs."

  "Can he go back to work?"

  "Yes."

  "How will he climb all the stairs at the office?"

  "The doctor said that when he gets better he can do it slowly."

  "How serious is this?"

  "He'll be all right. He's even resumed overseeing the firm. Every day at five-thirty Orfeo comes to note your father's directions and take letters."

  "Orfeo!"

  "Yes."

  "I thought he wouldn't come back."

  "Your father will tell you what happened, but I want to know why you came home early."

  "The university is in recess because of the war," Alessandro said, lying.

  "We're not in the war," his mother protested.

  "Half the students are French and German, as are many of the professors, and a lot of Italians are enlisting in the armies anyway. The war has touched everything, everywhere."

  He had neglected to mention that he himself had joined the navy.

  His mother's and father's room took up most of the second floor, with half a dozen windows that overlooked Rome, and a fireplace at each end. From the bed one could see the Apennines bathed in evening light, and the city spread out beneath, with palms rising now and then from masses of walls and roofs that looked like lakes of ochre and gold. A large desk was at the north end, opposite a couch surrounded by tables and bookshelves.

  The door had been left half open to let in heat. Alessandro entered and stood just inside. His father was sleeping, hands decorously clasped on his middle.

  "Papa," Alessandro whispered. The old mans eyes opened.

  "Alessandro."

  "Why aren't you under the covers?" Alessandro asked when he noticed that his father had been sleeping on a made bed, with a heavy woolen blanket drawn over him.

  "I'm only taking a nap. I'm dressed." He wore a shirt, collar, tie, pants, braces, and his suit vest.

  "Why are you dressed?"

  "I'm not sick, I'm just resting. I hate to stay in bed all day. Orfeo's coming this afternoon so I can dictate letters and instructions, because I'm still working on cases. When he comes I put on my jacket. I don't want him to see me without my jacket."

  "For thirty years he's seen you when you take off your jacket."

  "Not in my bedroom."

  "Is that why all the books are straightened, the papers stacked, the pencils upright in the pencil cups?"

  "No. That was from before, in case I died. I was very sick. I collapsed, and they brought me home in an ambulance."

  Alessandro stared at his father, unwilling to imagine him so weak.

  "I wanted to get the little things out of the way. I'd like the last thing I see to be the golden light on Rome, or snow on the mountains, or a great thunderstorm—not a pencil cup. Take them out of the room."

  "You're recovering."

  "I don't care. Get them out of here."

  Alessandro gathered the pencil cups. "This one isn't so nice, the red one," he said, holding it up, "but the black one is beautiful: it's like the Wedgwood pen in the office." He moved them to the hall, and returned.

  "I know," his father said. "The black ones were a set. I bought them in Paris in seventy-four. Bring it back and put it on the desk." Alessandro did. "That looks good. I broke the set because ... I don't know why, but it wasn't much good as a set. You don't keep a pen in a pencil cup, or the point dries out."

  "What about the others? They're still in the hall."

  "They were choking the room. Why are you home?"

  Alessandro told the lie about the university being in recess.

  "That's a lie," his father said.

  "I was told not to upset you."

  "Lying upsets me."

  "I enlisted in the navy."

  "In the what!" his father screamed.

  "The navy."

  "The navy? Since when did you enlist in the navy?"

  "Since last week."

  The attorney Giuliani pulled himself up on the pillows and gathered the blanket.

  "You stupid! Why?"

  "It's a gamble, but it makes sense."

  "To give up a professorship to enlist in the navy when Italy may soon be at war!" his father shouted. "That makes sense?"

  "Let me finish. First of all, the professorship is purely hypothetical. I start as a lecturer, detested by the department because I don't see things as they do...."

  "Why did they take you?"

  "So they can drop me later."

  "Alessandro, you don't enlist before a war, not unless you want to die. Wasn't Elio Bellati enough?"

  "Papa," Alessandro said, holding up his index finger in exclamation, hesitatingly. "I treasure my life. I'm not like the men who fly into the flame of war for no reason other than to perish. I'm not doing that."

  "No?"

  "Of course not. You're thinking of small wars, like the last. This one is different. You've read of the battles, the need for men, the way they use them up so quickly. France and Germany have conscription, and Asquith will fall if he should fail to institute it in England. If Italy enters the war, we, too, will have mass conscription. At my age and in my condition I'll go right into the trenches, where the death rate is tremendous.

  "The navy is different. In the navy, the targets are the weapons themselves, whereas on land the target is the man who carries the weapon. You see? And if Italy doesn't enter the war, I will have been in the navy during a time of peace. I think, though, that we will go to war. I've taken a chance that everyone I know is afraid to take. They prefer to hope for the best, but if things go badly they'll be in a disastrous position.

  "Precisely because I don't want to die in a senseless war, I have, for the first time in my life, calculated. I have retained all my passions, but I've changed. Perhaps for the sake of keeping my passions alive."

  "When do they take you?" the attorney Giuliani asked.

  "The first of Jan
uary."

  "That's not as soon as it might be," his father said, now resigned.

  "I know. I came home to get things in order—just like you."

  "Livorno?"

  "Venice, officer training, but before I go in I'm going to Munich."

  "Why Munich?"

  "To see a painting while I still can."

  Alessandro and his father turned at the sound of three sharp raps upon the door. Standing before them as stiff and short as a penguin, with a briefcase in one hand and a pencil cup in the other (he had knocked with his head), was the president of the University of Trondheim.

  LUCIANA FOLLOWED Orfeo, slipping into the room so quietly that her brother would not immediately have noticed had it not been for the striking picture she now presented, in that she was no longer thin, and what had been lost in delicacy had been returned in grace and composure. She wore a yellow dress, and her hair, which was tied with a yellow ribbon, looked as if it itself were the source of the light that played upon it, like strong sunlight shining in a stream.

  "Sir," Orfeo said, bowing slightly before the attorney Giuliani and acknowledging Alessandro with his eyes. "As I rose upon the Gianicolo in harmony with the blessed afternoon sap that filters through the universe and lands in the palms, I thought of the one whose cloak, deliciae humani generis, sweeps across the vale of the moon. Neither Artemis nor Aphrodite, overwhelmed with the sense of the gracious sap..."

  "Please, Orfeo," the attorney Giuliani interrupted. "We agreed that because of my condition we would refrain from speaking of the exalted one and the blessed sap."

  "Forgive me," Orfeo asked, waving his hands around his face in a totally unfathomable gesture, and then looking toward the ceiling, transfixed. "The chariots of the exalted one are so near! They sweep across the sky in golden flares. I am hard pressed not to sing, but, I know, the heart. The heart is a wheel that exultation can spin so fast that it can break apart. At our age," he added, "we must be cautious, lest we be overwhelmed with the blessed sap and die before we receive it."

  "That's right," the attorney Giuliani said, thinking that Orfeo was now ready to work. "Are you ready to work now?"

  "Yes, I'm ready to work now."

  "Are you calm?"

  "Yes, I'm calm," he answered. "But the glory!" he shouted, his body tensed and trembling, waves of joy and madness vibrating through every muscle. "The glory and the joy of the blessed sap and the exalted one! The light! The light!"

  "Orfeo. Orfeo," his former employer entreated. "The heart. The fragile heart!"

  "Oh yes," Orfeo said, trying to take control of his trembling body. "Sir," he continued, nearly under his breath, "the realms I sometimes see!"

  "Let's talk about the earth," the attorney Giuliani said.

  Orfeo nodded.

  "Good. Small things, Orfeo, small things, like oil on the waters. Quiet pleasures, good things."

  Orfeo closed his eyes.

  "A tree in the shade," the attorney went on, attempting to pacify the scribe. "A nice cup of minestrone. A quiet violin. A bird. A rabbit..."

  Orfeo, now calm, opened his briefcase and presented the attorney with papers that were to be signed and those with written questions necessary for the guidance of the firm. As the invalid slowly read, Orfeo turned on both heels, penguin-like, to Alessandro.

  "I do this from magnificence," he said. "I am no longer employed by your father."

  Alessandro looked puzzled.

  "I'll tell you," Orfeo continued, stepping closer and lowering his voice so as not to disturb the attorney. He beckoned to Luciana to join in. "I have made the incredible leap"—he made an arc with his left hand, following it with his eyes—"and vaulted above the deathly animal that is going to eat the century.

  "You know that there was no more for me to do in your father's office. The so-called typewriter..." He turned and made several gestures, the last of which was to pretend to spit.

  "In throwing myself to the wind, I saved myself, though unwittingly. Your father offered me continued employment, but I refused his kind charity. Several weeks passed, and I returned home, ready to clutch the sap.

  "Surprise of surprises, a carriage came to my door. Your father had thought about my situation, and, together with Signor Bellati, had found a place for me.

  "While my trade was vanishing, and found no demand in the legal profession, a need was growing elsewhere. I, a scribe of the old order, have been put in charge of a hundred new order scribes and a thousand of those disgusting things that are called 'typewriters.'"

  "Where?" Alessandro asked, thinking that perhaps Orfeo was describing a dream.

  "The Ministry of War. With the build-up of the armies they need scribes to write proclamations, commissions, and fancy communications. They needed a scribe of the old order to direct the scribes of the new order."

  Alessandro's father looked up from his papers. "Soon, he'll move his pen and the earth will shake."

  "I'm going into the navy in January," Alessandro told Orfeo.

  "The navy! I do everything for the navy. I make admirals, I launch ships, I establish new bases. What would you like? Just say."

  "Make me an admiral," Alessandro said, smiling.

  "All right," Orfeo said. "I'll bring the papers tomorrow." He was serious.

  "Orfeo, you can't do that," Luciana insisted.

  "Yes I can. I'll use one of the royal seals, and instruct the minister of war to make him an admiral. I'll write a directive from the minister to the navy, and then I'll write up the commissions, back enter them on all the books, et cetera, et cetera. It will take about three or four hours, but once it's done he'll be an admiral."

  "Some things would tend to give him away, Orfeo," Alessandro's father said, "such as his age."

  "I'm not responsible for anything other than creating him. Then I walk away. It's happened before."

  "What about something less ambitious," Alessandro asked, warming to the idea.

  "The less ambitious the faster it can be done. Would you like to command a ship?"

  "I don't know how, but I'll tell you what. After I finish the officer's course, I'd like a squadron of small boats in the Adriatic."

  "How many boats would you like?"

  "Twenty."

  "Would you like your own base? I could give you a small island somewhere, maybe in the water."

  "What about one of the Isole Tremiti?"

  "I'll see to the details. I have to advance you in rank, but I'll give you the kind of order that will let you take what you need in men and supplies. Tell me the date that you'll graduate from your course, and leave the rest to me. I'll put so much wax and ribbon on it that you'll need a wheelbarrow to carry it."

  "No," the attorney Giuliani said. "You will not do this, Orfeo. Both you and he," he said severely, pointing to his son, "could be shot. I forbid it. Drive it from your thoughts."

  "As you wish," Orfeo answered.

  Though deeply disappointed, Alessandro was also relieved.

  "Did you count the steps?" the attorney Giuliani asked Orfeo.

  "Yes," Orfeo answered. "Seven flights of stairs, or fourteen if you count the landings as divisions. Twenty steps on each flight. Thus, a hundred and forty steps. I counted them one at a time, both going up and coming down. It was the same number."

  "I'm not surprised," the attorney Giuliani said, taking out of his vest a gold pocket watch that showed phases of the moon against a star-dotted indigo sky. "If I take one step every five seconds, which will be easy to do, because the watch is marked to suit, that will be seven hundred seconds, or about twelve minutes."

  While his father dictated to Orfeo, and Luciana left to help with dinner, Alessandro sat in the window-seat. As the sun disappeared behind the Gianicolo its light filtered through the palms and pines that stood upon the crest, and part of Rome, though gold and ochre, was tinged with a green color that suggested a city of the East.

  Orfeo worked for an hour or so and then capped his pen. The attorney Giuliani instruc
ted him once more not to elevate Alessandro, and Orfeo agreed. As he left, he turned in the darkness in the hall and looked at Alessandro, who was sitting motionlessly at the window. Alessandro had fallen asleep, but in the shadows where he sat he looked awake, because his head was propped on his hand as if he were lost in thought. Orfeo checked to see that the attorney was absorbed in his papers. Then he looked once again at Alessandro, and, thinking that Alessandro was looking back, he winked.

  For the next fifteen minutes a number of servants in the kitchens of houses on various levels of the hillside looked up from their dough and their saucepans as a bat-like figure in a dark cloak fled down the many flights of stone stairs, laughing out loud as he went, and intoning what seemed to be some sort of incantation. No one understood the words, but everyone heard them quite clearly: "Cumbrinal the Oxitan, Oxitan the Loxitan, Loxitan the Oxitan."

  DINNER WAS served on the second floor, where Alessandros father was confined. The food, dishes, and cutlery were carried upstairs to a sitting room with a small fireplace. At this time of year the Giulianis normally would have eaten in the garden, but, now, even had the attorney not suffered maladies of the heart, they would have been driven indoors by an unusually frigid and surprisingly windy October. The cafe tables and chairs had already been stacked or removed, the streets had emptied, and leaves had begun to litter the roads on the Gianicolo. Though November might yet be like summer, October was almost like winter. Anyone walking in the dark little streets near the Piazza Navona would see orange suns blazing inside the shops and restaurants, as fragrant apple wood and oak burned in terra cotta stoves.

  "Who wants to go to Germany?" Alessandro asked everyone at once in the middle of the soup course. His mother, his father, Luciana, and Rafi, who had just come in from the cold, continued eating their soup without looking up. "Who wants to go to Germany?" Alessandro asked again, as if he had not been heard.

  Finally, Rafi looked up and said, "No one." Then he took more soup.

  "Why not?" Alessandro asked, with characteristic tenacity.

  "No one wants to go to Germany most of the time, Alessandro," Rafi assured him, "especially Italians. You must know that. And in the winter even more people don't want to go to Germany. Add to that the fact that Germany is at war."