A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

  Had they been deserters they wouldn't have come out to look at the marching column. Had they been farmers, they would have had a different air, and they would have had farms. It remained a mystery, and after the column found a half-doomed bridge and crossed on broken beams and hanging ropes that swayed over the rapids, Alessandro and the others made their way up to the clear air and sunshine, away from the river that had fallen as if into the underworld.

  This valley in the Apennines was entirely different. It was broad at the bottom, and where once a river might have been were fields of grain. At higher levels were grape vines on aged trellises, and higher still, on the saddle of the hill, near the village, olive groves. All of it was arranged in clearings and closes by serpentine runs of brush and low trees that filled creases and ravines in which hundreds of thousands of swallows had taken refuge. The dawn had awakened them, and the sound of their singing filled the valley—this was the base material that Alessandro's long memory had refined into song—but they hadn't yet lifted from their perches and roosts, they hadn't yet risen on the tide of daylight that was soon to sweep through morning.

  Perhaps he could go down the hill slowly, cross the fields, and then climb up again, timing his steps, as his father had done, so long before, in ascending to his office. If he reached the village they would say that, like many an old man who lives in memory and must grapple with the present, he had lost his way and had wandered aimlessly in the hills. Perhaps he had no reason anymore for falling or rising, and would do better on the hillside—if not at the crest, then at least high enough to view the beautiful things that are so elusive up close.

  He didn't need to gather his thoughts: they were gathering as if in a storm, like leaves, or birds, driven forward on the wind. Though the pace was rapid and the images and memories flashed by like all the notes from the many instruments and many voices that flow into the ocean of an opera, he felt the elements conjoin, for they were beginning to flow together in one stream.

  He closed his eyes and saw the Isarco and the Adige after the spring snowmelt, glittering with little onward-rushing waves, descending strongly with the theme and purpose of a single force. Though the waters were brought in on long stretches of silver river and white cascades that flew in all directions, they combined in a beautiful downward run that would take them to the sea.

  In an astonishingly short time, for reasons he couldn't discern but could feel, he was washed clean of the petty shame and embarrassments of a lifetime. He smiled when he saw himself, shortly after the March on Rome, in his darkened study, pistol in hand, ready to defend against intruders that he was sure he had heard. Before he could turn on a light, a tremendous thud came from his right, on high. He fired three tight well placed shots, each from a different position as he sidestepped to remove himself from the tell-tale flash at the tip of the barrel. After the ringing in his ears subsided he listened for breathing or the flow of blood. When he'd brought light to the room, Ariane arrived with Paolo sobbing in her arms, and the police were rushing fearfully to the scene. The sound of intruders had been a row of books that had fallen, and Alessandro had brought his military skills to bear in the execution of a textbook of physics. The first shot had struck the binding and flipped the book face out, and the subsequent two had bolted it to the wall. The police made him tell the tale twenty times over, and didn't believe that he had shot so well in the dark, but he had done much more accurate shooting in places that were far darker.

  His heart rose in remembrance of the childish enthusiasms he'd had as a small boy—the songs he was not afraid to sing in the presence of adults he hardly knew, the way he had skipped and danced on the street, unselfconsciously—for these brought him to his own child. Even as he had watched him, with great love, as he had done the same, Alessandro had not been able to leave his own discomfort behind, but now his shame dropped away. He remembered when, once, from pure happiness, he had danced on the street in front of his house. A passing adult had called out, "Look at that crazy kid!" and for years Alessandro had flushed in embarrassment at the thought of these words and the laughter that had followed them. But now he was able to cleanse himself of shame and embarrassment because he realized that shame and embarrassment are the result of being thrown back upon oneself, alone, and that they are tests of grace and forgiveness, the stripping away of pride, and the momentary death of vanity, like a clearing in dense woods, or the eye of a storm.

  Gone were the embarrassments, and in their place was love; love for the children, including himself, who had skipped like lambs; love for all who were awkward; and love for all who had failed. The stream flowed on, gathering strength, dancing through landscapes and falling through towns; all on its way to the sea.

  As much as scenes from his own life, he remembered the paintings to which he had been devoted. To imagine them in their full color, mixed and flowing, the one into the other, was a great gift, for they had taught him how to see. Like music, they touched inexplicably upon the truth; and they were worn and faded with the beauty of trial and age. The painters had painted landscapes, battles, miracles, and the human form. In battle even the expressions of horses were worthy of note. The tense, receptive, otherworldly faces of the soldiers were as real as if the presence of death had washed the canvasses with the glaze of truth. And Raphael, never tiring of angels and infants, painted miracles because his painting was in itself a miracle, and so text followed subject with the levity and grace of the wind.

  The aesthetic of the West was bound with the principles of religion, and its religion was bound to the principles of aesthetic. Color, miracle, and song were beautifully intertwined, strong enough, always, to ride out the sins of politics and war, a thread that could not be severed, a standard that could not be thrown down. Alessandro had devoted himself to this above all—even in battle, even in Stella Maris, even in the dark wood where he had left the Milanese—because it was where the truth lay, it was strong and bright, and yet its greatest monuments were constructed for the sake of human sorrow. And finally, and at the end, he had devoted himself to it, to what avail he could not know, because it was so beautiful he could not tear himself away.

  All the time that he was thinking these things he was seated on the ground in the bright sunshine, his cane on his lap, his white hair moving in the wind. The ground cover was fragrant and dry, almost as parched and blond as the hills in Sicily. And all the time that he was thinking these things he felt a great warmth and sadness. Just by imagining, without moving his arms, without any pretense of solidity, he felt as if he were holding his wife and his son.

  It was mid-morning, and his heart was full, when the swallows rose. They left the trees in a buoyant mass that floated upward like a cloud. They were so great in number, so fast and agile in turning, swooping, and gliding, that it looked as if the sky had burst into black flame, and they brought extraordinary depth and volume to the empty air, transforming its character almost as if it had been suddenly solidified.

  A born soldier, Alessandro saw in the corner of his eye something that elicited an ancient response. He turned to concentrate upon the intrusion of a hunter who moved through the olive groves, descending slowly from the right, into the valley that the swallows had filled and from which they had begun to rise to greater and greater heights.

  Alessandro turned again to the swallows. Though the sun backlighted them into hallucinatory streaks of silver, he neglected to shield his eyes, and he watched them fill the sky. As the hunter approached the base of the cloud, he made no effort to go quietly or to conceal himself.

  Alessandro followed the paths of single swallows in steep arcs rocketing upward or in descent. How quick they were to turn when turning was in order, or to roll and dart through groups of birds fired at them, as if from a cannon, in an exploding star. This they did of their own volition, and they did it again and again.

  For Alessandro they were the unification of risk and hope. It is hard to track them in violent winds high in the blue where they seem to
disappear into the color itself, but as long as they take their great chances in the air, as long as they swoop in flights that bring them close to death, you cannot tell if, having risen, they will plummet, or, having plummeted, they will rise.

  The swallows that were speeding alone in the blue would be far out of range of the gun, but when they dropped down again, the hunter would be there.

  These were the birds that Alessandro had seen all his life, nesting in eaves and on ledges, the simple inhabitants of barns and steeples, the ones who tended their young and filled the morning air with swiftness for generation upon generation. He imagined their hearts beating hard as they flew, and he imagined them at rest.

  He knew what was going to happen. They would be slaughtered in mid-air, in mid-flight. Their lives would end in a flash. It did not move him, at first, for he had seen far worse, and he was preparing to follow them that very morning. He thought that he would not feel for them, that, being one of them, as it were, he would follow them, without sympathy, to death, the way soldiers do when they are all facing the same fate. But it was not so, for Alessandro burned with the images of those he loved. He threw aside all the great things he knew, he threw aside the ineffable beauties, and the principles of light, and he burned with their memory.

  The hunter reached position, and lifted his gun. Two shots rang out in quick succession, and birds began to rain from the air, tumbling and turning as they fell on surprised and broken wing. He reloaded and fired again and again.

  The shots punched holes in the sky where dozens of swallows were taken in mid-flight, in groups, in pairs, in whole families that fell. The hunter's aim was true, but, even as they fell, others rose, and continued to rise.

  Alessandro did not imagine that he had a choice, for as he watched the slaughter he was moved beyond endurance. He remembered when his infant son had cried for a reason that Alessandro had long forgotten. He had held nothing back. All his heart had been in his cry, and then he had had peace. How beautiful be was when his face was filled with tears.

  To the sight of the swallows dying in mid air, Alessandro was finally able to add his own benediction. "Dear God, I beg of you only one thing. Let me join the ones I love. Carry me to them, unite me with them, let me see them, let me touch them." And then it all ran together, like a song.