by Mark Helprin
The outcrop where he halted was about six feet wide and twice as long, tapering to no width whatsoever at either end. Jutting from the south face of the mountain, it was well shielded from the north wind, though the winds at that height seemed to chase in a circle around the peaks. Toward one side of the ledge a crease in the rock made a shelter shaped like a lean-to or an attic without a knee wall, a right triangle about five feet at the base, five feet high at the peak, and almost seven feet along its hypotenuse.
After a few minutes of stillness in the open, Harry realized how cold it really was. He had been walking and climbing since Cold Spring station, and the exertion had made him sweat. Now, with a drop in temperature that was the advance guard of a change in the weather, with ascent to a thousand feet, and in a rising wind, the damp patch on his back where the pack had rested was achingly cold. The top of the water in one of his metal canteens had frozen, and to drink he had to shake it and break the thin plug of ice.
Because it would only get colder, he set about making preparations for his defense. He ate the small lunch he had brought. Eating makes heat, and to live outside one must stoke one’s metabolism with frequent, carefully spaced meals. Then he set about gathering wood. To keep a fire burning for as long as he might stay there he would need as much dry wood as he could possibly collect in a high place of few trees, the gathering of which would occupy him until dark. To make his stockpile, he had to scurry up and down the ledges, find the wood, break it up, and then, on paths made more dangerous because he didn’t use his hands, carry it without falling. Eventually he filled the cave with an eighth of a cord of grayed conifer limbs, splinters, and pine cones, enough for a small fire that could last for several days.
There was no water on the mountain, he had only two quarts, the air was dry, and he had been exerting himself for hours. He could always go down to a stream, but the idea was to hold out in one place and through physical deprivation cast himself back to the less tender state of mind necessary to serve his resolution. He thought he could last quite well, as he would be neither moving nor working, and he accepted the prospect of thirst.
As darkness fell, he made a fire beneath the canopy of rock, about two feet from the open. Like all evergreen fires but the wettest, it raged and crackled like gunshots and was as bright as Christmas on the ground floor of a department store. When the wind didn’t invade it, the tiny cave was almost warm, though as yet there were no coals. Despite a dim, otherworldly red glow a thousand feet above Cold Spring, there would be no one sighting him in, no beads taken, no killing patrols dispatched or howitzers aimed. Not long before, he had mainly done without. That was when the night would become hallucinatory, when they lost their bearings as well as their fingers, when time had no memory, the heart beat too slowly to be safe, and flesh froze black.
Although he had come to cast himself back, he would never get all the way. He had survived the war, but he could not do such a thing twice. He was older, and had barely made it the first time. Having fought for years, he found the professional soldier hard to discern. What was it that made anyone want to fight again and again?
At about seven-thirty he bloused his cuffs into his socks, tightened and buttoned his jacket and collar, fed the fire until it was gold, and, saving one blanket and the sleeping bag for sleep, threw the other blanket over his shoulders. Comfortably sitting against the granite wall, feet tucked under him, he stared into the abyss. Because they were cut out by the ledge, he couldn’t see the lights of the town below. In the far distance was a dim white haze, Manhattan’s nightly shedding of the energy and emotion of several million lives. But though Manhattan and the boroughs were vast and spread across worlds of land and water, from a distance they were no more than the glimmer of a lost brooch catching a gleam of moonlight.
Even before Catherine. . . . Catherine—when she put down her purse on a bench the strap fell over the arm in two perfect, parallel sine waves, as if she were infused with so much beauty it had to find outlet even in her accidents. Even before Catherine, Catherine was there, somehow always present, as if watching invisibly, as if it had all been locked down, and the purpose of his life was to make his way to her through countries, over seas, in battles, and falling through the air.
Above, the sky was clear, the stars throbbed. But straight out there was no light, just a mass of black that the eye mischievously made gray and populated with chaotic figures arising ex nihilo, their voices incomprehensible as they ceaselessly tumbled. From this came something like sleep. Colors and faces appeared. And below the noise, in more than a dream, another time began to rise.
The Bay of Biscay, early in the evening, on a smooth, rolling sea: the bow of a destroyer was raised twenty feet in the air and lowered with each swell so cleanly that when it cut through the glassy waves it made neither foam nor whitecaps nor the slightest sound, as the sea was complicit in its quiet race north. Few things are as wonderful as a ship mated gracefully with the waves, and it was breathtaking to ride in the prow. Because the speed of the destroyer was the same as the speed of the wind from astern, the ship’s noiseless strides were rhythmically accomplished in perfectly still air.
Harry and half a dozen pathfinders of the 82nd Airborne sat above the forecastle as the light dimmed and the sun turned a bank of clouds pink. They could feel the rumble of the engines. The narrow ship that was taking them to England was a spear in the sea more than ten times longer than it was wide. Always the vanguard, their detachment had been separated from the division and sent through the Strait of Gibraltar to make a left hook through the Atlantic.
They were going to England so as to go to France, which might be the last place for some or perhaps all of them. But the enterprise was so great, and they had been caught up in it for so long, that the intervals between battles now blended with the battles themselves as if there were no distinction. If they feared anything, it was that they would become wed to safety and forget that to carry themselves properly in combat so as to stay alive they had to forgo hope of living.
At sea this quality was not degraded. The warship cut through waters that held enemy submarines and were near an occupied coast from which attack aircraft routinely sallied. The sailors were tense, and when the paratroopers had done calisthenics on the afterdeck, their arms stacked, the gunners had remained at their guns, and lookouts had carefully scanned the sky.
Despite the English weather, and as bad as English cooking had been and had become, the spring would be mild and the food better than what he had carried with him in Sicily. There would be a long period of rest before the invasion, when he would be able to walk in London or in the countryside as if there were no war. He was going to England, and to get him there the sea was lifting and lowering him in air through which he was now well practiced in falling and floating.
33. Pathfinder
IN LONDON THE massive stone columns of the great financial houses still stood in the City, blackened by a hundred years of coal smoke, their ornamental bases now covered not with a dusting of snow but the dust of bomb craters and the ash of fires that consumed whole blocks. Each excavated crater or freely standing chimney, and every high wall bereft of supports, or formerly private room now open to the air, its wallpaper flapping, was yet another reinforcement of English resolve. Because of the way the bombs fell, striking at random and with devastating effect, and because everyone was always at risk, ready to be separated from a material state that could vanish instantaneously, London came alight not only with spark and fire but with holiness and life. Its muted colors, the famous whites and grays, the flashes of red and occasional blues, were now laden with longing and emotion as seldom before.
Harry Copeland, formerly of the 504th Regimental Combat Team, but now Captain, Special Advance Element, 2nd Battalion Pathfinder Team, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, walked from one end of London to the other, with neither plan nor schedule except that in late evening he was expected at an address in South Kensington. Because he
had last been at a dinner party in a different world and a long time before, and at such engagements had often been disruptive without intending to be, he was fairly apprehensive.
Though he had never stated it, he had felt from early childhood that life was magnificently intense, in splendor overwhelming, in sight demanding, and in time very short. And that therefore the only worthwhile thing other than a noble showing in the face of its dangers was the ravishing connection of one heart to another. This made him uninterested in the idea of people sitting at table, talking and posing. But occasionally he would attend dinner parties, because he recognized that not everyone in the world thought as he did, and he had always hoped that someday at a painful social event he would encounter a woman whose views were in this regard the same, and who, like him, was so naturally lonely that, for her as well, making small talk and holding cocktails was somewhat like being burned at the stake.
There was also the matter of army food. He hoped that though it was England of 1944, someone had been able to come up with something better, like a real egg. And there were other things, too, such as his desire simply to be in an elegant room in the company of women rather than in a tent with a kerosene lantern, a kerosene stove, and the murmurs of men playing cards. That is not to say that he was uncomfortable with privation or that he did not know that it had kept him alive and he owed it a lifelong debt of gratitude. Never would he assume, no matter what age he might be privileged to reach, that having once been thrown into war it could not happen again. And then, as time passed, he discovered more and more that the strength engendered by privation was not only a defense against death in battle, but that it had a purity and austerity that set existence ablaze.
He knew London well enough from before the war when he had come down from Oxford, coming down meaning not, as was commonly assumed, from north to south, but—Oxford being west of London—according to the flow of the Thames. Since his arrival in the city on his first leave, he had used a compass, which enabled him to avoid the illusory paths worn by others. You might walk west along a street or road that after gradually bending would point you north or east. Things often did not run as they promised, go where they announced, or stay constant as one believed. With a compass to correct his impressions, he formed an objective view of the lay of London, the beauty of which was not diminished. To get to his engagement, in proceeding from Marble Arch to the bridge over the Serpentine he crossed paths and walks and found his way directly. Going overland, finding and marking routes, staying true to what existed, and being wary of new features on the land were now part of his trade, and upon his trade his life and the lives of others would at times depend. In addition to formal exercises such as parachuting into Scotland or onto the sheep-dotted fields closer to his base, he practiced wherever he was.
But to attain Brompton Square he had to take the regimented streets, and his compass, folded with a click, was deep in his pocket when he arrived. As if he could neither remember what the world had been like before the war, nor envision what it would be like after, he found the color of the private house intimidating. Eighteenth- century stonework behind abbreviated gardens and an iron gate framed a red door amid windows glowing with the light of the rooms beyond them. As darkness fell, the blackout curtains were still open, and as he hesitated at the gate a woman went from window to window dutifully closing off the warmly lit tableaux.
He was received almost apologetically not by a servant but by the lady of the house, the wife of his former Oxford tutor. Almost white-haired, in a black velvet gown, she welcomed him and led him to what they called the salon, where upon his appearance conversation, though it continued, was muted as swiftly as if someone had thrown a switch. Heads turned tentatively to assess him. He assessed back, his initial nervousness giving way to confidence as he scouted the guests and marked them down.
There was his tutor, a heart-rending shock as Harry knew he would be, tall and stiff in a wheelchair, unable to speak, unable to lift his hand, which Harry took and squeezed. And when he did, Martin Cater’s waxy fingers, the skin glossy and immobile, tried to squeeze back, but could not. An exploding shell somewhere on the desert coast of Libya had been the cause of that. A man who spoke so beautifully, knew so much, and formulated so well, could now only observe. His hair, white and wiry, had thinned to almost nothing, riding above the tightened skin of his scalp and a long scar that graphically signified his affliction. But he still hung on, all he knew was yet within him, and he was dressed magnificently, medals and all, in the uniform of his rank as colonel.
His was the place of honor, close to the fire, where conversations crossed. Opposite him was an academic colleague whom Harry had not met. Too old for this war, he probably had seen enough in the last, although one could not tell for sure. From him, inexplicably, Harry immediately received emanations of hostility, disapproval, and immutable arrogance. Harry thought, Either I’m in for it or he is.
Fortunately, to his right was an exquisite woman of Harry’s age or perhaps a few years older, a New Zealander, a divorcée, a musicologist now working in a factory making field kitchens. She wore a silk dress somewhat darker than royal blue, and a glittering diamond necklace totally superfluous in drawing the eye to the majestically décolleté bosom over which it was draped. Sneaking a look, Harry knew that this was a woman of great and alluring density, not of volume but of solidity. Above all, her eyes and brows, almost Eurasian, were clean of line, high, sharp, and ethereal. And her smile, snow-capped, gave off more light than her diamonds.
And then two Americans, a journalist and his journalistic wife, both of whom had been living abroad since the early thirties and both of whom, of English descent, were by now almost British in speech, even if not for a purist. Among other things, they couldn’t have cared less and they drank a lot. He was what by now he would have called a cheeky fellow, with a wonderful, mischievous, brave face, and she was almost as attractive as the New Zealand woman. She had a hypnotic, ancien régime birthmark to the left of her upper lip, so perfectly placed it looked artificial. Maybe it was. And she had thick, soft black hair and an expression that was simultaneously randy and sweet. Somehow it was appropriate that he was from Fort Worth and she was from Manchester, Vermont. Harry knew that in the battle sure to come with the choleric don, he would need allies, and though they were long-term expatriates and she had alluded to a sojourn in El Paso by saying, “It’s da moon,” they seemed spirited enough to stand their American ground.
Other than Martin Cater, Harry was the only one in uniform, and an American captain’s uniform could not hold a candle to that of a British colonel. He was also the youngest, unattached, and socially inept. At least he knew he was socially inept, and, at first, tried to shut up.
He observed with mounting joy the contrasts with his life in camp and the field. Three women were in the room. No room could ever be alive without at least one, and here they were, with all the pleasurable tension they generate—like music, or the incline that assures the life of a stream. The New Zealand woman and the American were sufficient to produce waves throughout Harry’s body that pulsed to his fingertips. So badly did he want to hold them that he wished there had been dancing, but it was enough just to be in their presence, to hear them speak, to watch them closely as each made her point. He studied the New Zealander’s face, lips, her delicate hands, her devastating profile, the curve of her neck, the way her clothes draped. Inconspicuously and with hidden admiration and respect, he looked at one woman and then the other. They knew it, they always did, and it did for them at least as much as it did for him, which was the way it was supposed to be. Nothing would come of it but memory, neither action nor regret, and thus it could charge and be charged by civilization far more than just the enervated recollections, if at all, of a desperately fast, alcohol-fueled, lightning-quick fuck in a room above a pub, memories of which were brought back in the thick fog by a soldier returning at four in the morning, and who on other nights might wander off into the trees to no lesse
r avail.
This evening in Brompton Square the fire steadily flared, the lights were strong, the colors subtle and lovely as so often they are in England. A pair of Empire torchères stood upon the mantel flanking a Georgian clock that ticked like a bomb. The sole remaining seat was next to the New Zealand woman, who introduced herself as Claire.
“Claire what?”
“Jay.”
“The sister of Claire Daloon,” the don said, after which Claire gave him a look that could be likened only to a harpoon in full flight. She actually began to get up as if she were going to go over and smack him in the face.
As the don had missed the real pun—Claire Jay—Harry almost said, “Are you a woman of the cloth?” but wisely decided to refrain. Instead, he said, “What an excellent name, for its clarity, quickness, definition, color, flight, reflex, and beauty.” (The don looked as if he had just inhaled a lemon.) “Are you related to John Jay?”
“Your revolutionary? Yes, I am, in fact, directly and not so distantly, as not that much time has passed.”
When Harry had settled into the sofa alongside her, the cloth of his trousers crushed against the blue silk of her dress, and, although after that they did not touch, he kept on feeling the presence of her body next to his. Perhaps it was its heat, or his imagination as he leapt ahead and was overcome, or her pulse that, hardly perceptible over the gap of open air, reverberated through him. He turned red, and the redder he turned, the redder he turned. There was a natural limit, but by the time he had reached it he had stopped the conversation completely. As everyone looked on, Mrs. Cater inquired about his condition.
