by Mark Helprin
It was cold, but wrapped in blankets he was fairly warm. He tried to sleep by following the streamerlike remnants of the morphine into the dark, but he couldn’t, because even though he was injured he was well rested and alert. This led him to believe that perhaps he would heal. At least when he was still he could entertain such a thought. Any movement brought so much pain that he was forced to reassess. He may have been bleeding internally, with a dangerous infection in a dangerous place. The allies would have to take the city within a day or two, he thought, or, like so many Englishmen before him, he would be buried in Italy.
Stars pulsed and meteors flared now and then across the sky. The scent of fields afire carried on the air, and echoing off the west parapet, as if in a Brighton seashell, came the sound of waves. No matter what would happen to him, to those he knew, to England, or to the cause for which he fought, the stars would remain untouchable and active, the colors of light constant, the laws of nature immutable. Had the universe been still, he would have had no comfort, but the universe moved as if it were alive. The sun sailed perpetually and the earth forged ahead through space in a never ceasing silken glide. Comets tore through the settled systems in surprise, intruders and dissenters whose broader orbits made those of the planets seem tame. The asteroids jingled like ice, and far away the gorgeous mass of galaxies and distant stars blazed in a rhythm that had begun at the beginning of time.
He was content on his rooftop in the midst of battle while the stars burned like phosphorous flares. One death would not shake this eternity of motion. And if he could hang on until morning and force himself to rise, he would bring upon the enemy a fire of such magnitude, precision, and vigor that the Germans, who had asked for Götterdämmerung, would get it.
AND THEN AS IF BY MAGIC his concentration upon distant light was cut short by a soft, muted shine when an electric light was switched on beneath the lanterned skylight closest to him. Probably no more than thirty or forty watts, it glowed from within, flickering occasionally with the uneven current, the only light to shine from within the building.
Just underneath him, someone had returned to his flat during a lull in the shelling, and turned on a light. The soldier on the roof found its glow enormously touching, so weak was it, so tea-colored, blooming unexpectedly in the dark, and hidden from everyone except him. He wanted to imagine who it was: a civilian, or perhaps even a soldier quartered there, but a soldier who had put down his weapon and taken off his heavy belts and ammunition. In other times, he would have let his imagination complete the scene, but suspecting that he might not live another day, he refused to imagine anything. What he had at the moment seemed more than enough, even overwhelming.
He had the lantern, glowing, and beyond it, over the parapet and out of sight, encampments with fires flickering dangerously despite the tendency of artillery to home in on light. He wanted to speak to whoever was within. The language spoken was not important; whether it was a man or a woman was unimportant. There, close to him, was someone yet living, perhaps the last imperceptible touch he would have with another life. He was already hovering above this person, unseen, like an angel.
Then the water came on. Through the vents in the lantern came its sparkling but languid sound, rising in the pipes, issuing forth, floating in air, tangling down, splashing at the foot, and running away with almost the sound of bells. The slight hiss of falling water was a cousin to the sea, the stars, and the static on the radio. Without any sense whatsoever, it all made sense, as if it had been orchestrated, but he wondered if these sounds would have seemed so carefully arranged and perfectly in harmony if he had been on a bus in Camden Town, worrying about small things. Suddenly, everything was benevolent.
Billows of steam began to float from the vents, coming quickly into the sharp night air. Soon they smelled sweet, and the water was held, and then dropped, in quantities that were remarkable. How had the water been suspended but in a woman’s thick hair, in long coils carefully lifted from the nape of her neck to catch the flow?
He had no idea, of course, who she was. Nor did she know that he was above, and she probably never would. He managed with great difficulty to move off his blood-soaked square of the roof and travel, before too long, to a point close enough to the lantern to hear every drop of water, to see the steam on the opaque plate of glass, to inhale the sweet moist air, and to touch his fingertips against the vents as if in doing this he were embracing a woman that he would love for the rest of his life.
WHEN THE INHABITANTS of even the busiest cities are rising, the soldier about to do battle has long been up. In the absence of hot water or heat, he pulls as much life and warmth into his body as he can by moving, if he can. And he is able to feel action before its impact, as if the coming battle were a train speeding toward him in a tunnel, pushing a breeze miles ahead of its arrival.
As dawn struck the German encampments east of the river, soldiers moved about and circled the fires. Their bodies bent and dipped as they folded blankets. They stepped into the sun, and looked around. They shouldered their weapons. Messengers drove from one strongpoint to another, on motorcycles or in trucks. Officers stared through binoculars at the clearly illuminated allied lines.
The river was hidden beneath a low wall of mist that the sun soon made airborne and broke into shards through which shone the tops of the Apennines in pale reds and gold. Smoke that had risen in dark columns from a hundred fires was bleached into transparency by the sun, and even the waves rolling in from the open Adriatic seemed pushed down by flat trajectories of light fired from the semifinished crags of the Balkans.
When the sun was high enough the allied gunners began their volleys. These, for want of the kind of information he could give them—other spotters were in other places, but none had his comprehensive view—were poorly directed. Two observation planes had been shot down the day before he was parachuted in. Though many guns had exacted a toll, they needed, above all, guidance.
For the second time on the roof he awoke in heat and glare, and when he heard the shelling pick up he stirred, eager to get about his work now that he could. He was sick, and wanted to stay still. The slightest movement was painful and nauseating. Though his fever had partially abated, even in the absence of the morphine he was not quite himself. He knew that it was best not to move, that he had to let things settle, and the prospect of reopening his wounds by strain contradicted every natural impulse.
But upon going into battle—at the instant he volunteered, in the moment he accepted his orders, when the plane had left the ground, and when he had stepped from it into explosions and flak—he had already written himself off in the quiet way that allows soldiers to do their duty even unto extinction. The more he presumed he would not last, the better he was able to take satisfaction from doing what was required. The delight of honor unknown to anyone but himself would have to substitute for a life that no longer lay ahead.
Injecting morphine, raising himself, finally standing, and taking his telescope, radio, and maps to the parapet was for him as meaningful as the coronation of a king, for like a king who has taken a solemn oath, he had abandoned his private self.
After bulking up the parachute silk again to soften his contact with the parapet, he began to observe. So many targets were gathered before him that he chose what looked like the most influential ten, and called them in with great care. In a perfect world he would have called in many more and let the command choose what to hit and in what order, but, then again, in a perfect world he would still be in All Souls Library. As imperfection ruled, he did what he could: three concentrations of tanks, waiting to sheer off the first allied columns to penetrate in depth; four hidden strongpoints filled with infantry; an ammunition dump; a group of a dozen howitzers and 88s; and the tanks on the ridge. He would start with these, wait for redeployments, attend to them, and then, assuming that he still could, call in targets during the crossing and the battle.
First, he brought in a target with his telescope, in which what he sa
w was compressed, clear, and laden with intense color. When he had determined that the target deserved bombardment, he looked for landmarks, and then, after difficult deliberation, assigned it to a cell on the map, to which he added a red-penciled number. The cell 20 Dec. 04, for example, became number one. He then determined where in the box the center of the target rested, and marked it with a red dot. Each cell was divided further into four quadrants and a bull’s-eye where they met.
In an hour, he had marked his targets and called them in, reading clearly as fast as he could, so as to stay on air for as little time as possible. Anyone hearing a list of any sort broadcast prior to a battle would know it was a spotter no matter how ingeniously the transmission was embedded in ordinary radio traffic. The weak signal did not come from German radios, and yet it came from within the German lines. They would home in on it if they could.
The first call, delivered crisply despite the morphine, was surprisingly short: “One: twenty December, nineteen four. Q two, toward center. Two: four February, nineteen thirty-six. Q four, corner. Three: eighteen April, nineteen twenty-one. Q two, center. Four: thirty June, nineteen ten. Q one, top …” until he signed off, “Furious, out.”
Monitoring this, if they had, the enemy would not rush to move every unit and reform every concentration. Had they been so willing, it would have been easy to scramble them. They would sit unknowing and uneasy, until the barrage came through, and even then they would do nothing but seek shelter. Only when the pattern of incoming fire appeared to tighten would they scatter. He had seen it before. He had caused it.
Preparation for firing would take at least half an hour and perhaps much more. His signal had to be translated into map coordinates for the gunners, they had to ready and aim, and the firing had to be timed for the assault. It might begin as soon as technically possible, or not until nightfall.
The morphine had begun its work but with less effect than the first dose. Semifloating, nauseated, he made his way back to his resting place, hoping the nausea would not increase. For someone to whom each breath seemed an agony, the prospect of prolonged retching was a serious threat. He imagined that it might kill him with much pain and no glory, and after dropping to his knees he lay once again where he had lain.
IN THE MORNING the guns went silent. The heat and quiet, the morphine, and the wind-carried sound of the waves put him in another world. He saw his life as if in stained glass, the streaming light through each section of glass providing an ignition of color. Though not every scene came to him it was as if every moment had a delegate in one vivid image or another. The panels were silver and gold, as blue and purple as grape, as warm as rose, as white and clean as a chalk cliff, or azure, or emerald, or gray, and they deepened with every stroke of his heart. He rode through black air above the earth in immense machines that Milton might have imagined, and flew from them to descend, under benevolent stars, to a world consumed in war.
Morphine and fever pulled him toward the bounds of life. Content to have drifted off without ever again knowing the sober feel of gravity, he was brought back by a great blast of naval gunfire rolling unobstructed over the sea. Then came the secondary thunder of high-explosive shell finding its mark after sailing many miles and plowing deep before it burst. Everything shook in half a dozen different kinds of bass vibration. His fingertips jumped. His lungs felt like drums. His eardrums popped in and out with the concussions as if he were rapidly changing altitudes.
At the parapet it was difficult to peer into the blast areas, not because of ballistic debris, which did not reach him, but because of the shock waves, which did, and which were as unnerving as sea flowing over the deck of a ship. His face was distorted by these blast waves as if by g-forces, and when he tried to direct fire more precisely he found it difficult to move the telescope, change position, or read the map.
Like a pilot who struggles against gravity and disorientation, he struggled against the detonations to make his best determination of where they were and how far off target. Then he dropped below the sheltering parapet and called in corrections. When they were made and his reports of damage given, he told Glorious that he would try again, but that he wasn’t sure how long he could last. “Wounded,” he said.
The radioman to whom he was speaking replied, “Well done. Keep at it as long as you can.”
LYING HALF PROPPED UP against the wall, without the strength to crawl back to his place, he heard a vehicle stop on the road. Looking at the door to the stairs, he realized that even if it meant aggravating his wound until it would kill him, he had to get across the roof, climb the ladder to the water tank, and drop in. Although he only assumed it, soldiers had begun to search the house.
Remembering that no incoming fire had hit near, he lifted himself, looked over the north parapet, and saw that the tanks were moving to the top of the hill. The allied assault had begun, and they were driving to their firing positions.
“Glorious,” he said through the radio, his energy gone. “This is Furious.”
“Go ahead, Furious.”
“What about number nine? You haven’t hit number nine. It’s moved west two hundred yards.”
“Sorry, Furious. Busy. Will do, I’m sure. Over.”
“That’s all,” said the soldier on the roof.
“Thank you, Furious. Glorious out.”
To cross the roof, he had to crawl. Holding the submachine gun by its web strap, he dragged it as he went. His passage was loud, and the gun pulled up whitewash, leaving a trail that would give him away. With neither the strength nor the time to deal with it, he abandoned it where it lay.
War was like a series of windows, each narrower than the one preceding it, until in the end nothing was left of light or choice. How wide the world had been in the last days of civilian life before he had had any notion of enlisting. As soon as military service became a possibility, the passage began to narrow, and with each step it grew tighter and tighter. A hundred choices and a hundred chances later, he was crawling across a whitewashed roof as fast as he could, hoping to drop himself into a water tank.
Concealing himself inside the tank, as unpromising as it may have been, was better than simply lying in plain sight and dying in a single volley of automatic-weapons fire. Still, he was moving so slowly that when they would burst onto the roof he might be right in front of them, and he regretted that he was leaving a trail of blood.
At the foot of the tank, from his position flat on the roof, the ladder looked amazingly long and narrow. The wood was solid enough, but the twenty rungs or so seemed to call for a base more than just a foot across. Nor was it secured at the top, although on either side of the rectangular opening that gave access to the interior were long iron handles that, should the ladder move from side to side, would confine it.
He used the ladder itself to help him get up enough so he could start to climb. Every movement of his arms or legs was agony. His ribs opened the wound and cut into him from within. In a few minutes he was at the top, grasping the iron rails. Each step up had been a betrayal of his body, he thought he was going to bleed to death just from the climb, and not only was his position impossible, it was at the end of a trail of blood.
The water was four feet below him, and on the interior wall was a ladder of iron rungs that led into it. In the best of times, bending through the opening and positioning oneself on the ladder would have been a feat of acrobatics, especially since it was so high in the air, but in his condition it seemed impossible. He took another step up, until his waist was level with the bottom of the opening.
Using his arms to lift himself as he twisted and entered was out of the question. As precariously as he was positioned—and he might have fallen not just onto the roof but over the side of the building—his arms hung down limply at his sides. He hoped that something would happen that would allow him not to enter in the only way he thought possible, which was to pitch himself forward.
He was not going to do that unless and until the door to the roof opened.
Even then he would wait for an instant, hoping to hear English. What he heard was not English, nor indeed any language, but the sound of naval gunfire and the transit of huge shells closing in from miles away. In groups of two and three only seconds apart they began to explode against the hill, along the top of the ridge, and amid the tanks he had targeted. Though the blasts almost threw him from the ladder, which rocked and twisted, he held fast to the iron rails.
One shot against the building and it would all go down, one shot nearby and the shock might blow the water tank from its spindly perch. How in the midst of deafening explosions would he hear the door open? He wouldn’t. So he decided to go back down. But after taking two steps, he saw that the door already was open. With their backs to him, weapons extended, three Germans were going through the drill of assaulting a roof. They had seen no one at the base of the ladder, and now, just a few feet from him, were about to discover his abandoned equipment. Then they would turn, and there he would be.
He climbed up. When he reached the opening, amid the explosions, he pitched himself in. Hitting his head against one of the iron rungs, he landed on the water flat on his back, which pushed him toward the wall, where he hit his head again. “Fuck,” he said, before he went under. It was as if the three blows he suffered had been delivered by a sentient being. The water was freezing, black, and, at the bottom, where beams of sunlight ended a short transit from cracks above the waterline, were waving patterns of gold and green. As soon as he broke the surface and breathed he tried to mute all sound. The echoes inside were extremely loud, but the sound was contained, and in the midst of the barrage even had it not been contained it would not have been heard.
