In Sunlight and in Shadow

by Mark Helprin

  When he got to shore he pulled himself up on a flat rock and turned to see what was behind him. Nothing but the slight chime of the river. He half dragged himself, half scrambled on his knees to the thicket in which he had hidden the rest of his things, and there burrowed into the vegetation as deeply as he could. He tried to catch his breath. Using his good hand, he wrung out the bandage and began alternating applications to the entry and exit wounds.

  Then, allowing the wound to bleed, he readied the carbine and peered through branches and young grass at the opposite bank. Six soldiers were coming up from the south, cautiously in fear of an ambush. They may have felt outnumbered. Though occasionally they would glance across the river, the ground there seemed empty, and they were focused north, where the invasion was in progress and where the train they had lucklessly been escorting had been rushing. Harry watched as they came level with him, and prepared to fight as best he could. But they moved on. Perhaps they didn’t want to find him.

  Before dark, he went east two hedgerows, south a field or two, and concealed himself in a thicket that long before had smothered a stone wall. Until it was pitch black, he stayed here and concentrated upon stopping the flow of blood, which he did after having torn the bandage in his teeth and applied half to the entrance and half to the exit wounds. At first the gauze was as soaked with blood as it had been in the river, but then the open air took away enough moisture from the surface to harden it, and the clotting worked its way down. He sat upright so as not to increase blood flow at his shoulder. Every minute that passed without bleeding was a victory. Rather than elation, what he experienced was both deeper and quieter.

  It took most of the night to move six or seven kilometers. The roads were far more alive than they had been, with military convoys’ red blackout lights strung like coals sometimes for half a mile. He neither saw nor heard any patrols, and what he feared most, tracking dogs, did not appear. Nor did their distant barks that, when heard by their quarry, would cause the unconscious and unavoidable production of a scent that for them made pursuit both easier and more exciting.

  Though afraid to follow the river directly back to his hiding place in the Bois de Soulles, he was too weak not to. When he arrived, an hour before dawn, he threw down the pack and the carbine, sank to his knees, ate and drank methodically and for strength, wrapped the blanket around his upper body, lowered himself onto his right side, and slept. Were they to find him they would find him asleep, but sleep would be worth the trade. In the minute before he found his rest, the whole world spun before his eyes: trains moving, metal flying in slow motion, sounds deafening, men falling, water rising in white, saplings slapping him in the face, darkness, concussions, running, rocket trails, smoke.

  Splayed out, hardly able to move, throbbing with pain and sweating with fever even in the morning, he awakened not with soldierly caution before dawn but carelessly late and facing a white-hot sun. It seemed strange not to be able to turn his head or rise, to be dizzy and weak and as vulnerable as a baby. As he lay there undiscovered, he was of a delirious two minds. One was almost pridefully appreciative of the hiding place that shielded him from the Wehrmacht and the SS. The other was aware of the soldiers missing in action as the armies passed on to further objectives. So many little clearings, tangles of brush, ditches, trenches, and canals were the quiet resting places of bodies that would never be buried, their graves as painfully open as the hearts of those who grieved until they would follow.

  After half an hour of effort, he managed to roll fully onto his back. Some time later, breathing hard, he was able to turn his head and look at the exit wound. It was difficult to see exactly what was going on because blood, gauze, flesh, cloth, and dirt were combined in an unintelligible mass that was so hot he could feel it on the left side of his face. “God,” he said to himself, dismayed that infection could gallop so fast.

  He could neither move, nor defend himself, nor hope to be found. Were the Germans to find him, they would kill him. Were the farmer to find and shelter him, they would kill the farmer as well. There was little danger that anyone would happen upon him where he was, unless like the Germans they had dogs, and he wondered how long he could last, and, if he could last, how he would be able to make his way out. Very much unlike him, he thought he couldn’t. Shock, exhaustion, and the pathogens liberally applied to his wound at the riverside as he crawled over open soil combined to make him less than optimistic. Because he had been deathly ill not a few times in childhood, he knew how sickness smoothes the way. It wasn’t just a question of weakening the will, but of opening to the sick a vision of things they cannot see when life runs strongly—of rhythms, signs, signals, lights, and mercies that one can apprehend only as one falls.

  Though it seemed to make no sense given what he knew of his injury, he was so intensely stricken that he would fall asleep and awaken without knowing how much time had passed, and then stay awake for how much time he could not tell. But somewhere in the in-and-out he reasoned with himself, inquiring if in fact he had another wound. To investigate, first he moved his legs, which seemed all right, and then he inspected his arms, which were all right, too. He unbuttoned his tunic and felt under his shirt. His chest was unbroken. These movements made him slightly more supple and freed him to prospect over a wider range. Doing so, he managed to get his right hand around his back, where he immediately felt a hole in the cloth. Following this with his finger, he discovered that it was only the preface to a small hole in his lower back that, though it seemed not to bleed, was still open. This, then, was why he was so sick. One bullet had passed through him, but another remained within.

  Although he couldn’t tell where it had lodged and what processes it had interrupted, he believed that it might kill him—which in those momentous years and that momentous week would have been no great distinction. It was so easy for the power of life simply to drain away. With the opening of an interior channel that must remain closed, or the closing of one that must remain open, strength once admirable and extraordinary would become weakness. And in a man, although his strength would never grow beyond a very small capacity—he would never lift a hill, run thirty miles in an hour, or swim the ocean—it was certain that one day his weakness would become infinite. All the soldiers Harry had seen stopped dead by a bullet or shell were instantly thrown back to the eternity whence they had come, and were just gone. This was the essential condition, the truth of the world, all life only a short liberty away from it.

  As he couldn’t move from where he was, couldn’t treat himself, and couldn’t know the full facts of his condition, and as night approached and he wanted rest, he did what he had hoped never to do. Not so much to alleviate the pain but rather to take himself away from the fight, he took out the box with the morphine, uncapped the syringe, and plunged it into his thigh as once he had been instructed. Even before it took effect, everything changed. He had willfully and at great risk removed himself from the battle. This was because he knew that were strength to flood back it would be only if every door were opened wide, every chance embraced, and his every trust made absolute. As the morphia began to stream through his system and carry him away, he looked at his hands, and when they seemed to become bodiless before the rest of him and to rise without weight, he knew he was almost gone.

  Death leads either to the absence of light or to its omnipresence. One summer night in France, Harry Copeland lay in the brush, dying of a wound he could not see. For a few hours, the morphia had cleared away the frictions and regrets of existence, relaxing him to whatever might come, closing his accounts, dotting every i, crossing every t, winding every clock, locking every door, packing every case, and forgiving every sin. The only regret that stayed and that morphia could not erase was that he had yet to love or be loved as he had always hoped. All the majestical lights, airy and bright, the floating orbs, the effulgent stars, were lonely things and would not suffice. And here it was, deep in a luminous, moonlit forest, that he had wished for an angel, for as they lay dying
all soldiers wherever they may be need an angel to carry them up.

  35. Vierville

  A MAJOR AND A lieutenant of the 82nd came to the field hospital in Vierville sometime in June. Like many paratroopers, they were strapping and tall. Their faces were as remarkably even and uneventful as those of bankers and brokers with houses in Scarsdale or on the North Shore. The major was in his late thirties, and smoked a pipe. The lieutenant was young, reserved, and from the South. Harry was too tired to try to guess the state, but nonetheless he could not help but think of Georgia, and left it at that.

  Carrying chairs that, like overly cautious lion tamers, they held out before them with both hands, they walked down the center aisle between the invalids. Then they rooted the chairs next to Harry’s cot and stepped close, speaking as if to a foreigner.

  “Why are you talking to me that way?” he asked. “I’m an American. I understand English.”

  “Sorry,” said the lieutenant. He handled apologies. “We just wanted to make sure you could hear.”

  “Why wouldn’t I hear?”

  “You’re wounded.”

  “Not in the head.”

  “We’ve spoken,” the major said, correctively but entirely without animus, “to a lot of men, many of whom were in terribly bad shape.” He dipped his head forward, as if in a bow. “Can you answer a few questions?”

  “Sure,” Harry said, weakly. The energy that upon their arrival he thought was his had left him unexpectedly, which they could tell—from his appearance, his breathing, and because now and then he closed his eyes as if he were asleep or wanting to be.

  “You were in the church at Montmartin en Graignes?”

  “I didn’t know what it was called.”

  “During the massacre?”

  “And before, and after.”

  “How did you get there? It wasn’t your regiment.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you fight with them to hold the town?”

  Harry shook his head to signify that he hadn’t.

  “You were wounded and already in the church? During the fight?”

  “Brought there after the fight.”

  “From where?”

  “The Bois de Soulles.”

  “Where is that?”

  “South of St. Lô.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “We were dropped to harass the Götz von Berlichingen.”

  “Who was dropped?” the major asked.

  “My stick of pathfinders, detached from the Five Hundred and Fifth.”

  “So you were never with the Five Oh Seventh?”

  “Not until the church. They were already there. The Germans put me with them.”

  “How did you get from St. Lô to Montmartin?”

  “With the Germans who captured me. Look, why don’t I just tell you what happened?”

  “Please, go ahead.”

  “I can’t speak too long: I’m tired.”

  “Whatever you can manage,” the lieutenant told him.

  Harry turned his head up, mainly for comfort, and saw the sun almost directly overhead through the weave of the olive-drab tent cloth. The oil that coated each thread acted as a refraction grid, plastering the patch of sun with millions of miniature spectra. He could see the sky between the threads in an uncountable number of little boxes faithfully holding the color blue. “I was dropped near Soulles. I made a refuge in the forest, went north to the railroad that leads to St. Lô, and blew up a train.” He stopped to breathe for a while before resuming. “I blew up a whole train, and I killed a lot of them.” He stopped again. “They looked like us. The ones who were left shot me.”

  “Then they captured you?”

  “I ran north along the river—creek, really. I was going to cut back to throw them off. I did. But before I did, I was hit twice.”

  “You have three gunshot wounds,” the major said, almost accusingly. In civilian life, he had been a prosecutor.

  “I know I have three gunshot wounds, Major: I’m the one who has them. After the train, I was hit twice. I went back to the forest thinking I was hit only in the shoulder, but then discovered that I also. . . . Here.” He motioned to the wound around his back. They nodded. “I was good for nothing. I couldn’t even move. I thought I was going to die, and I would have. I lay there for I don’t know how long. Used up all the morphine. I was out.”

  “Then what?”

  “They found me.”

  “Who?”

  “Seventeenth SS.”

  “How? You had lost them.”

  “Dogs.”

  “They took you to Montmartin? What for?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t conscious all that much. I thought they were taking me to Germany.”

  “Did they interrogate you?”

  “I think they tried. They brought a lot of officers to look at me. I remember a lot of black suits. Maybe it was a dream. I couldn’t tell you if I were on a train or a truck or a donkey cart or what. For much of the time I thought I was dead.”

  “That they were going to kill you?”

  “No, that I was dead. I was carried around all the time. It never stopped. I would wake up in the dark, in a strange place. I didn’t know what was happening. Things wouldn’t stick to my memory but just slide off. I thought I was a child again. I thought I was an old man. I thought I was in a cathedral. That I was flying. That my mother was there, taking care of me.”

  “There were nuns in the church. They were executed.”

  Harry took this in quietly. They could see that he was trying to remain composed, and they were not surprised, as they had discovered that wounded men are often very emotional. “They weren’t your mother,” the major said. “Your mother’s okay.”

  “Yes, she is,” Harry said. “She died a long time ago.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain. I wasn’t thinking. Really, I’m sorry. Do you remember who shot you? I take it that this is how you got the third wound. Was it an officer?”

  “Yes.”

  This animated them to the edge of their lion tamer’s chairs. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. They went around shooting people. It was very quick. We tried to get up, but most couldn’t. People fell over and were shot on the floor, sometimes as they were crawling. I was in the litter they brought me in on, and they hadn’t taken off the straps.”

  “You hadn’t been there long?”

  “I don’t know. The straps had been loosened, but not enough. I tried to get out, but couldn’t. They moved down the row, shooting.”

  “What did you see, exactly?”

  “I wasn’t looking. I was using what I thought would be my last few seconds to prepare myself.”

  “How?” the major asked, though not as a part of his inquiry.

  Harry remembered how, and always would. “To fill my heart with love,” he said, “as if breathing in every moment of my life. That’s what I tried to do. You know those wrappers that you can do a trick with by lighting them on a plate?”

  They didn’t have the slightest idea of what he was talking about.

  “They come wrapped around an Italian cookie,” he said, twirling his finger to help them along. “I can’t think of the name, but if you fold them the right way they hold together after they burn. The ash that’s left is so light it suddenly launches upward on the rising convection current that was made when it itself burned. The denser cold air that follows pushes them up, and they rise. I breathed in. I tried to take in all the love I had ever known, and then I felt that I was rising, really rising up. We’ve all been there, up there,” he said, meaning airborne troops, although his questioners were not sure. “We know what it’s like, but instead of descending, this time I was going up.”

  “But they shot you in the leg.”

  “In the leg.” Harry looked over the sheets and toward his legs.

  “Did they miss?”

  He moved his head from side to side.

  “How do you know?”


  “The pistol was pointed at my forehead. I thought that was it. I was sure. He shot me in the leg. I waited for the next shot to end the pain, but when it came it wasn’t for me. He had moved on. Though it doesn’t make sense, I was sorry that I was still there. Maybe it was because I was really ready to go, and it wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t afraid.”

  “They killed seventy of our men that way,” the major told him.

  “I didn’t know how many,” Harry said. “And I’ll never . . . I’ll never quite. . . . I mean, I’m still there, I always will be.”

  As field hospitals go, which isn’t saying very much, the hospital at Vierville was excellent in many ways. By the time Harry got there it was far enough from the fighting that only occasionally and with a south wind did he hear the distant concussions of bombs and artillery. Small arms fire, as familiar to him as rain on the roof, was entirely absent. And yet, day and night, even though the port of Cherbourg was soon open, one could hear trucks and tanks on the road, streaming south from the artificial harbors at Utah Beach six miles to the north; and bombers, fighters, transport, and reconnaissance aircraft passing overhead at various altitudes, their sounds covering a range from angry and urgent to the intermittency of a fly in the winter sun. The twenty-four-hour flow into the battle was reassuring if only because the Germans had no such overbrimming supply and were literally stunned by its ceaseless swelling.