Nick

by Michael Farris Smith

  “I have a room where you can come and stay,” he said. “It is closer to the river. There is a nice café next door.”

  “There are many nice cafés.”

  “Not as nice as this one.”

  “Does your room have four walls and a woman downstairs who asks for the key when you leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I think this room is better and you can stay with me.”

  She closed the windows again. Several wine bottles with candles in their necks stood together in the corner and she lit them. Then she sat on the edge of the mattress and unlaced her boots. She took off the first one and held it up and felt the wobbly heel and touched the tender, worn sole. She took off the other and tossed them next to her suitcase that lay open with her few clothes spilled out onto the floor. She stood and unbuttoned her loosefitting coat and her loosefitting blouse and hung them on the back of the chair. She stepped out of her skirt and then rolled off her stockings and the cool night air sent chills along her arms and legs and she shuddered for an instant. And then she lay down on the mattress, sliding herself between the pile of costumes. And she waited.

  This is not real, he had thought. You are not real and if you are what do you want and what will happen after this.

  She waited.

  You do not do this with someone. You do not walk across a park and find a woman who speaks to you with direct and maybe honest words and you do not go with her to a strange place and you do not do this. This is not real. This is some ploy or some trick and you cannot be there the way you are there and I don’t know what you want. And I don’t know why I am scared of her.

  She waited.

  His hand began to shake and he grabbed it quickly as if it might strike lightning if ignored.

  She waited.

  Maybe this is real. Maybe I can have this. The world is different now and you know that and maybe your world can be different too and you can have this and you can lie down with her and she doesn’t want anything and she is not going to trick you and this is real. Maybe you can touch her and feel her and maybe the sky is still blue and the sirens reverberating outside across the city are not for you. Maybe this.

  She stared at his hand. She moved onto her elbows and her chin rose above the fringe of the wedding gown and she said something in French. Whatever it was she said had drawn him to her and he went down to his knees beside the mattress.

  He leaned up in the trench now. The murmur of men and the whistling above and he looked around. The wildeyed faces of strangers. And he was a stranger to them. So few remaining that he had begun this war with and he had stopped asking names or exchanging histories or gathering or giving anything personal with men who might not be there in an hour. But they were bound by this thing that had forced them all together, that forced them to do what even their nightmares could not have imagined. He sat with his knees pulled up and he anxiously listened for the next explosion that would propel them up and out and he wondered if this would be the time that he was shot through the chest before he could even make it out of the trench. If this would be the time that the grenade landed at his feet. If this would be the time that he would stumble and be stabbed before he could get back up. He dropped his head on his knees and listened and waited and tried to force something good into his thoughts and all he could think of were the words she had said that helped him across the room to her and how she had touched the tip of her finger to his restless hand and for the entirety of his life he would wonder what it was that she had said. The next explosion fell damn near on top of them and rose them all to attention, and then another and another and the same lieutenant who had told them to sit tight moments before now screamed for them to rise and attach your bayonets and form the line. Get your shit together and get ready to go and kill.

  4

  After the attack, after the wounded were dragged away, after cigarettes, they peeked over the edge of the earth and watched the two Germans stagger toward their side. Mindless and confused and certain they were heading in the direction of safety. A rifle raised and settled to shoot them but another said hold on. Let’s watch a minute and see what they do.

  The two lost men held hands and swayed like drunks. One sang and the other rolled his head and every few steps they would both stop. Look around in all directions. Exchange in brief conversation. And then walk and sway and sing again as if strolling down some boulevard of promise.

  The heads rose all along the dugout as word of entertainment spread and the unusual sound of laughter passed from one man to the next. The couple now swung their arms together and danced and skipped in a circle, the dust at their heels and their steps surprisingly careful around the craters and the song louder and when they turned their backs the Americans saw that one of the lost soldiers was missing part of his skull. That caused the laughter to grow and they pointed and began to heckle the gruesome sideshow as if it was part of the act.

  Nick had dozed but another slapped at his arm and told him to get up. You got to see this. He rose to the noise. Climbed up and asked what was going on.

  “Out yonder. Got two lollipops dancing around like schoolgirls. Looks like they got no idea where they are. Or who they are, don’t seem like. Hope their pockets ain’t filled with grenades.”

  The two soldiers skipped and swayed. Stopped once and shared a long embrace and the jeers and whistles multiplied but the couple ignored. They held on to one another. Seemed to be making some kind of promise. And then they let go and made several more playful circles and then the one with the missing piece of his skull collapsed to his knees.

  “Go ahead and gun ’em,” somebody called out.

  But that was met with disagreement as the men wanted the show to go on.

  “Shoot them,” Nick said.

  “What for?” the soldier next to him said.

  Nick looked at him. The grin on his face as he took in the spectacle. Something both grave and childlike in his expression. Nick didn’t answer and he watched again.

  The one who sang stopped singing and dropped to his knees with the other.

  “Come on! Act two!” someone yelled.

  “You ain’t kissed yet!” yelled another and then there was laughter and then others joined in, trying to top one another.

  Then the singing began again. Except that it was a different kind of song from before. It was not the circuslike song of their disillusioned playfulness, but the song of hurt. Long, extended words that rose and fell with the tone of despair or degradation. Maybe even hope. Something prayerful or meditative and the man sang with conviction as he held his companion underneath his arms. Holding him so that he would not fall to the ground but stay with him and it was easy to see with the slumping weight that the man with the missing piece of skull was not there anymore. But the other held him and sang to him and his voice seemed to stretch across the bloodstained land as if carried by birds.

  The jeers and jokes ceased. The men watched quietly.

  Nick slid down, not wanting to see anymore.

  And then a single rifle shot splintered the moment and the song came to an end.

  They had lain awake in the middle of the night in the attic and he told her that he was not certain anymore of his home. I don’t believe that I can trust it. I don’t believe I can trust my home or my country. Or this country. Or any other. It is a strange feeling. She lay with her head on his chest and his arm wrapped around her and he felt her back and the bones of her ribs.

  “No one can trust so much at one time,” she said. “But you have a place to go. That is something.”

  “Maybe. Is Paris your place?”

  She rolled off the mattress and lit a candle. Then she reached into the open suitcase and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She slid back underneath the costumes with him and she unfolded the newspaper ad and showed it to him in the candlelight.

  It was a large advertisement with a dancing girl in the center. The dancing girl’s skirt was hiked and she kicked a leg and exposed
high stockings and the wide smile of something like lunacy covered her face. The dancing girl pranced on a stage and spotlights shined on her from each corner of the advertisement.

  She pointed at the words and translated for him. A large script ran across the top of the ad and said the stage is yours in Paris. Running down each side of the girl’s body were the promises. Showgirls needed. Shows nightly. Room and board and travel provided for performers. Best wages. Support our men. Across the bottom of the page, underneath the floating stage, was the name and address of the Red Brick Club on rue Pigalle. After the address was the instruction to write to us, describe yourself, and if we feel like you are ready for the lights, your train ticket will be mailed to you.

  After she had read it all she folded the ad and tossed it on the floor.

  “They do not tell you many other things,” she said. “When you arrive you must pay for the train ticket. But I do not have money. So I take the room upstairs and I am fed but I must pay for every night I sleep and every bite I take. I am bought before I get here.”

  “But you danced?”

  “Never.”

  Nick reached across the floor into his coat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He took one out and held it to her and said try a whole one. She put it in her mouth and Nick reached for the lit candle. They smoked and stared up at the attic beams where the faint candlelight disappeared.

  The streets of Pigalle and Montmartre were filled with young women who had answered such ads. They came expecting chorus lines and flashy piano players and the heartbeat of a new direction only to find that these dance halls were places where women danced on makeshift stages with bottles swinging from their hands and men reaching for their calves as they stepped and slapped and cackled with each troll of fingers across their flesh.

  “You have a choice to make,” she said. “Serve drinks for almost nothing or become something else.”

  “You could not go back home?”

  “My home is no longer there. It is in the ground. So now I am an artist. Starving like an artist. Selling nothing that I make like an artist. Hiding like a mouse in an attic.”

  “I saw you sell two frames.”

  “Do you see how many remain in the cart?”

  “I have never made anything.”

  “You have. Only you do not remember. All children are artists.”

  “I think I was born this way.”

  “You are a poor boy. I think you have bigger eyes than you say.”

  “I once thought to write.”

  “Write what?”

  “I never decided.”

  She sat up, her bare back exposed. The orange tip of the cigarette blossomed as she smoked and then she let her head fall back and she blew the smoke straight up into the air and said you should not be so sad.

  “I’m not sad.”

  “You are something.”

  “I have to go back to the front.”

  “You do not have to. Does your captain know you are here in this room with me?”

  He shook his head. They smoked. Nick turned on his side and faced her and said I have six more days. She lay back down and pulled the dresses across her and said you do not have six more days. We have six more days. I give my days to you and you give your days to me. And if we want more when those days are finished then we can take them.

  5

  Reinforcements arrived and Nick and the others marched in a staggered line toward the relief camp. They walked for several miles along a dirtworn path and then they climbed into the backs of trucks that carried them the rest of the way.

  The camp surrounded a village of what had once been a thousand residents but only a hundred or so had ignored the evacuation and remained. Tents for the men stretched out from the town center and a hospital had been set up in the storehouse of the local winery. The camp was a bustle of officers and the coming and going of battalions and Nick and the others climbed out of the trucks and were given permission, unless they had open wounds, to go directly to the chow line.

  The day was hot and the air hung thick. Nick took a plate of beans and rice and bread and then he walked into the village square and sat in the shade of a slender alleyway. A clothesline hung across the alley, draped with towels and sheets. A military truck buzzed around the square and an old man with a wild gray beard smoked a pipe and sat in an open second floor window and watched the soldiers sitting and eating on the sidewalks of his home. Two nurses hurried across the square, one on each end of a stack of folded stretchers, and Nick waited for the whistles and calls that always chased but the nurses passed to silence as none were willing to stop chewing after an extended stay on the front. While they ate a private walked around with a box and handed out packs of cigarettes and matches and chocolate bars.

  When Nick was done he set the tin plate on the cobblestone. Leaned back and unbuckled his belt and opened the button on his pants. He patted his stomach that had risen like a loaf of baked bread. Up above a woman with thick arms leaned out of the window and began to pull in the clothes from the line.

  “Bonjour, l’américain.”

  Nick raised his hand and gave a friendly wave.

  “Fatigué?” she asked.

  “Yes. Fatigué.”

  She gathered the sheets and towels and disappeared inside the window. Nick’s head fell back against the building and his eyes closed. He was almost out when she whistled. He looked up and she was leaning out of the window.

  “Tenez, l’américain,” she said and she tossed a cigar down to him. It bounced off his hands but he picked it up. Smelled it.

  “Merci,” he said.

  “C’est bien, l’américain,” she said and then she tucked inside again.

  Nick twirled the cigar. Set it next to his plate. The sun disappeared behind scattered clouds and across the square soldiers lay on their backs or on their sides and tried to find sleep. Birds gathered and danced around scraps of bread or rice and those who did not smoke swapped cigarettes for chocolate. Nick’s hand began to tremble and he looked at it and said you don’t have to do this right now. You are sitting in a little French town with your stomach full and a nice woman has given you a cigar to go along with your cigarettes and chocolate. So stop shaking and relax. Smoke your cigar.

  But you’ve never smoked a cigar, he said, answering himself.

  I never smoked cigarettes either but here I am. And sure I have smoked a cigar. I must have at some point. After Yale beat Harvard all the boys were smoking cigars and singing and swaying in the cold December sun.

  Not you.

  Well if I didn’t then I’m sure I smoked one at Buddy Holland’s wedding. He was handing them out to everyone. I remember champagne and the band with the guy who played the standup bass and his mustache curled on the ends.

  You took it but you didn’t smoke it. You said you didn’t smoke when he handed it to you. Remember how funny he looked at you? Like you were missing the point. Which I think you did.

  I’m sure I’ve smoked a cigar.

  I’m sure you haven’t.

  Then I’ll smoke this one.

  You are supposed to have a special occasion for smoking a cigar. At least that’s what you have always believed.

  I’ve always believed a lot of things.

  It’s not the time for philosophy or politics. You need a special occasion to smoke that cigar.

  No I don’t.

  Yes you do, l’américain.

  Then I’ll invent one.

  Nick bit off the tip of the cigar and spit it out. Then he struck two matches at once and sucked on the cigar until it lit. He gagged at its strength and fell to the side with big coughs.

  “That’s a big boy cigarette,” a voice called from down the sidewalk.

  The French woman stuck her head out of the window and asked something and he waved her off. Sat back up. Wiped his mouth. Moved the cigar to his lips. Inhaled and blew out the smoke with the same breath. The smoke was heavy and sat in front of his face in the stagnant su
mmer air. Above more clouds had gathered and the low rumble of thunder or artillery fire or both came from the west.

  So. What’s the special occasion, he thought.

  I live. I am alive.

  Above him one of the shutters slammed shut. He casually looked up at the clothesline. Casually sucked on the cigar. The other shutter closed and it was then he heard the doors closing shut in his mind. First his mother closing the bedroom door and then his father closing the back door as he walked out onto the back porch. Never words of hate or resentment only the closing of doors and the stretching silence that followed. The empty stares or the turned backs or the creak of a house settling into silence.

  6

  It was as if he had lived a separate childhood. A life divided. A mind divided. Time divided by compartments of light and dark.

  The dinner parties his mother hosted with the polished silverware and shined plates. The table in the corner stacked with wine bottles and fresh flowers in a crystal vase in the middle of the dining table. The guests moving about the house in calculated nods and handshakes as they shared the language of the expected. Nick sitting at the top of the stairs and watching and listening.

  The spring days in the garden with his mother as she knelt on an old quilt to keep her knees clean as she clipped the dead left from winter. Nick piled the clippings and put them in the garbage can as she talked and talked of what she would plant this year and how much it had rained or snowed and she hoped against a false spring because there was nothing more cruel than a false spring. His father in the garage sharpening the shovel and hedge clippers and at the end of a day of pruning and trimming shrubs they sat on the porch and ate something with gravy. Always something with gravy in the first days of spring. After they ate his mother and father sat on the swing close to one another and he caught them smiling as he ran around in the front yard or tried to climb the neighbor’s tree though his father told him to keep off the small branches or I’ll end up having to replace something that God already made.