The Verdun Affair

by Nick Dybek

  “Lieutenant. Lieutenant,” Tretta said.

  Paul tried to sit up. Tretta’s leg drooped from the rock lip, looking withered and swollen at the same time.

  “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Tretta said. “It looks like the moon outside.”

  Paul managed to get to his feet. Tretta’s face was not the gaunt white he’d prepared himself for but a glowing yellow. His good leg was swollen, and Paul bent down to rub it. He could feel the leg shivering under his fingers. Tretta’s eyes had gone somewhere else. There was sweat across his brow, his cheeks, his lips.

  “If that is really the moon out there I can still walk, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “It might be the moon. Why don’t I check?”

  Tretta closed his eyes. Paul stepped from the dugout. There was a smear of orange in the eastern sky. The mountains were still a cool white. They all had names, but he’d forgotten them. There was an impassable drop and a silver ribbon of river in the distance. That was all he knew.

  Tretta’s eyes flicked open and closed through the rest of the morning; still, he was the one who heard the engine. At first Paul thought his friend was having another fever dream, but then he heard it too. Paul told Tretta to be quiet, but already he was breathing raggedly, deeply asleep. Paul let the vehicle pass before inching out to the road, praying for the Habsburg double-headed eagle on the back of a staff car.

  Instead he saw a Red Cross ambulance with the Italian Tricolore on the tailgate; it was twenty meters down the road, driving slowly, even given the incline. Paul had only a moment to make the decision.

  “Stop,” he yelled in English. He couldn’t remember how to say please. He ran a few steps and almost fell. The ambulance stopped, the engine still running, and Paul put his hands in the air.

  The light in the sky had gone from gray to silver, bright enough now to make out a skull and ribs on the side of the road, a screaming mule’s probably. The driver stepped from the vehicle, coughing into his hand—a tall man, tanned, with the reckless smile of a child. His hands were dirty-red from infection. A thin mustache on his lip looked like a practical joke.

  “All right, I’ve stopped,” the driver said in English.

  “Thank you,” Paul said. “I know you didn’t have to.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” the driver said. He had the petulance of a child too. But then he looked at Paul with sensitive, blinking eyes. “Are you surrendering to me, Lieutenant?”

  Paul hadn’t spoken English in months; the language made his tongue feel heavy and slow. He tried to explain himself and found he couldn’t.

  “That’s all right, Lieutenant. You don’t have to do anything either. But how long do you want to stand out on this road?”

  Paul took a breath. He said words in English he thought made sense, but he could tell from the driver’s face they had been gibberish.

  “Where are you from?” Paul tried then, hoping a few easy words would help him find the rest.

  The man smiled, rather sardonically. “New York. The state, not the city. I always have to add that before anyone asks. And you?”

  “The city of Vienna,” Paul said.

  “Oh, not the state?”

  “No.”

  “I’m only joking. I know all about Vienna. My favorite college professor was from Vienna. He was very proud of your city. 1683 and the Turks. Charles V. I know all about it. Dr. Szeps? By any chance?”

  Paul shook his head.

  The driver shrugged. “Well, it would have been too strange if you had known him. Why don’t you just show me what it is you want?”

  Paul led the driver to Tretta, still asleep in the dugout. The driver nodded and knelt to listen to the breaths.

  “Can he survive?” Paul asked carefully.

  “Not really my territory,” the driver said. “I’ve been surprised. Either way. I’m on my way to triage now, though. That’s certainly his best chance.”

  Paul nodded. Tretta would be put in a camp after that, but the chances of someday giving his children five of the best in a mountain valley were much better. Perhaps they could even save the foot.

  Tretta opened his eyes. “What is it, Lieutenant?” Tretta asked. “Who is he?”

  Paul knelt down so that he could speak into Tretta’s ear. “Red Cross. He’ll take you to the Italian doctors. I think you should go, but it’s your choice.”

  Tretta bit his lip but didn’t look the least bit afraid. “Obviously I want to go.”

  Paul nodded to the driver.

  “Help me get him to the ambulance then,” the driver said. “I could take you too. No doubt there’s something wrong with you, if we were to look.”

  “Yes, I’m sure there is,” Paul said. They both managed to smile.

  “You survived the Italian mine, didn’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because that’s what you look like,” the driver said.

  Later, Paul would think about that line. He would think about every inflection in the man’s voice, in the way he had said New York, Vienna. Later, he would see the man’s face in the windows of butcher shops and in the round mirrors of carousels in the Prater. And he would see it in Bologna five years later.

  Why?

  Paul had been surprised to find the back of the ambulance loaded with two other men, unconscious on stretchers; surprised that the driver had been going so slowly; surprised that he had stopped at all.

  “Thank you,” Paul said. And the American looked away and smiled, as if something in Paul’s voice had embarrassed him. He nodded once and slammed the door and drove another forty meters, to where the road began to vanish around the mountain. Paul remained in the middle of the road, watching, reckless with relief.

  But there the driver stopped the car again and got out and saw Paul, still standing in the road. He held up one finger—just a moment, he seemed to say—and opened the back of the ambulance, as if there were something wrong inside. And indeed it seemed there was something wrong; the driver pulled Tretta’s stretcher from the back of the ambulance, and holding half of it up to his shoulders, walking backward so that Tretta once more faced Paul down the length of the road—he was almost upright; his eyes discernibly open; his mouth open, speaking to the driver, though the words were impossible to hear. The driver dragged him like that to the narrow shoulder of the road and, under the broadening light of midmorning in the mountains, dumped Tretta over the side and into the valley.

  * * *

  The restaurant had almost cleared; outside, a boy beat the rain from the awning with a broom handle. The chef stood at the bar, drinking wine and wiping his brow.

  “He died,” Sarah said. “He died?”

  “He certainly did,” Paul said.

  “But why?”

  “I’ve gone to considerable lengths just to ask that question. Now, perhaps I can.”

  At Paul’s signal, the waiter brought a bottle of grappa and three chilled glasses. Sarah poured one for herself, carefully, then threw her napkin on the plate and shoved it away.

  “You think my husband did that?” she asked. “You think he did that?”

  It was almost touching how she could so thoroughly miss the point. Paul tried to look her in the eyes, but she batted away his gaze.

  “Fairbanks—the man in the hospital here—is not your husband. His name is Drummond Green. He was born in Albany, New York, and left Cornell University to join the AFS in 1915.”

  “That’s the name of the driver?” I asked.

  Paul nodded.

  “How on earth did you find out who he was?”

  First he had to survive. Would we indulge Paul in that part of the story too? He really was almost finished. He traveled west at night across the Italian-held roads and arrived at the Austrian position in the middle of the second day, where he was brought before the major from Cherz. You’ll be pleased to know, Lieutenant, the major said, that our counterattack was successful. Pleased, Paul thought, what
does pleased mean?

  They sent him to the rear with nervous collapse, then back to Vienna for treatment at the Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital, where, in another lifetime, he had attended the ball as the Arctic explorer. He would spare us the details of his treatment—his nightmares, his stammer, his eventual recovery—other than to say that he looked up from his bed one day to see the face of the girl—she was not wearing a black habit now, but a nurse’s white cap—who had once spoken to him at the ball.

  * * *

  The rain began again. Every table was empty except ours, and the entire staff sat on stools under the awning outside, smoking, cooling in the spray. Sarah drank off her glass and poured another.

  “Drummond Green,” she said. “You truly are still trying to find the man who killed your friend? Weren’t there a lot of men who killed your friends?”

  “True obsession, I suppose, bears no real explanation. Why him? I’ve already given you my best answer.”

  “Then try the easier question,” I said. “How did you find him?”

  “It wasn’t difficult, actually. I had a name to start with that he’d given me just by happenstance.”

  “Szeps?”

  “I found a Rudolph Szeps who taught at Cornell University. I learned later that there was in fact a unit of Cornell men—isn’t that the phrase?—in Italy. I found the list of those names—there are lists of names everywhere to be had now, as you both know.”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “But I also know that names are really worth nothing in the end.”

  “And what of faces? I looked at hundreds of American faces, all doing their best to look optimistic.”

  “What faces?”

  “In Cornell yearbooks. I sent away for all the recent ones. And, eventually, there he was. Drummond Green. I knew him immediately. Even dressed as he was.”

  “Which was?”

  “As a geisha in The Mikado. Drummond Green, History, class of 1913. Once I had his name I was able to request records from the AFS. Drummond Green went missing around the time of Caporetto. According to his parents, he’d been suffering from war neuroses. They even suspected he’d taken his own life.”

  “That wasn’t enough justice for you?” Sarah asked.

  Paul laughed. “I admit my story paints me as a fool, Mrs. Hagen. But not the kind of fool who believes in justice, I hope.”

  “You kept looking?”

  “Obviously, I did.”

  “Planning to do what?” she asked.

  “Fairbanks has nothing to fear from me, if that is what you’re wondering. Mrs. Hagen, I give you my word.”

  “Did you say ‘his parents,’ Paul?” I asked. I knew I should be happy, or at least hopeful, but I only felt all the more alone.

  “I wrote them too. They were devastated, of course.”

  “And told them what?”

  “The same lie I told everyone I wrote. That in 1917, in the mountains, Drummond Green saved my life.”

  * * *

  The young man in the picture wore a sweater and a crimson-striped tie. He was not handsome, exactly, but cute—boyish, as Paul had said—and his smile was so guileless and broad I almost felt sorry, knowing what would later become of him.

  But was this man Fairbanks? At first I thought not—the bearing and mien of the man in the photograph were so at odds with the patient’s. But what of the shape of the face, what of the deep-set eyes and the slightly crooked nose? And what was a bearing anyway? What was a mien?

  “You can see, can’t you?” Paul said, as he picked the photograph up with his fingertips.

  “What am I to see?” Sarah asked.

  “That there’s a chance you might be wrong, Mrs. Hagen,” Paul said. “Have you considered that you might be wrong?”

  She opened her purse. She found her own photograph and pushed aside the bottle of grappa and placed hers next to Paul’s, with a look of something like triumph on her face.

  But it wasn’t clear what she thought she’d won. I’d never seen a picture of Lee Hagen before, and he looked little like I’d imagined. He was in his AFS uniform, one arm at his side, the other self-consciously holding his belt. His face was mild and even a bit chubby. The close-mouthed smile was far more mischievous than I would have guessed.

  Clearly I was not the most objective audience, but, the more I looked at the two pictures—the more I thought of the tremoring face in the converted practice room—the more I did see a resemblance between Fairbanks and Green. If you cropped the hair, if you sunk in the cheeks and wrecked the teeth, if you haunted the eyes, they might very well have been the same man.

  I studied those faces—the sanguine expressions held too long, smiles decaying at the mercy of the shutter. I studied until I grew tired of looking, and I was somewhat startled to realize that I had grown just as tired of the faces at the table—Paul’s and even Sarah’s face.

  It felt as though all I knew of the world was grief, and yet I knew nothing of grief—not their kind of grief, anyway. My own when my mother died was private, personal, and, for that reason, just bearable. I had felt the streets crumbling under my steps, the clouds falling from the sky, but no one else seemed to, so I was able to preserve my sense of the world, more or less. But for Sarah, for Paul, for the families I’d met at Verdun, there was no such levee.

  How do we know a man cannot return from the dead? Scientific fact, I suppose, but what is fact but agreement? In Europe, in America, in many other places in the world that year, nearly everyone was grieving. Might they then agree, as Paul and Sarah did, that the dead can truly rise, not to demand atonement from the living as they do in J’accuse, but to return to beds and tomato gardens, to slip behind newspapers on trams? To appear, disguised, in mental hospitals? It was nice to think so, but wasn’t it the responsibility of those of us left relatively untouched to hold the doors open for the rest of the world, in the hope that the madness would someday fade?

  Once, in Verdun, I ran into an old couple hurrying down the Voie Sacrée, each holding an end of an old steamer trunk. They were both dripping with sweat, arms trembling with the effort.

  “Can I help you somehow?” I asked. The man gave me a look—asking for pity, or offering it, or both. The woman seemed to catch this expression because she turned to him, then turned fiercely back to me.

  “We don’t have any more money to give you. We’ve paid it all to the gravedigger.”

  “What gravedigger? From where?”

  “Thiaumont.”

  I knew I should stay silent, but I was full of scalding anger toward the greedy man who’d sold this woman the bones of a stranger, probably, for all the money she had in the world.

  “You must listen to me,” I said. “The graves in Thiaumont are all unmarked. There are no names. There’s no possible way . . .”

  “That’s what the gravedigger said too,” she answered. “But don’t you think I know my own son?”

  I let them flee down the road—god knows how many more miles they had to go—without saying another word. Why didn’t I know as well years later, in the restaurant with Paul and Sarah? Outside, the rain came in sheets. One of the busboys ran into the downpour and back again to the safety of the awning. Everyone laughed as he wiped the wet hair from his eyes. I could hear the laughter of the hostess above the rest.

  I thought a long time about what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it, but it still came out wrong.

  “Fairbanks is neither of these men. Don’t you see that it’s impossible? It’s impossible, and it’s a little insane.”

  The restaurant was dead quiet, and I’d spoken much louder than I needed to, but I almost thought they hadn’t heard. Sarah began to cry, and Paul put his hand on hers for comfort. She didn’t recoil. He looked at me in the manner a parent looks at a child who is trying but simply doesn’t understand.

  “You haven’t seen me cry, have you, Tom?” Sarah asked.

  I’d seen her cry many times, but I didn’t say so. She dabbed her eyes with a monogra
mmed handkerchief that Paul had handed to her. He tried to smile.

  “I suppose it is impossible, Tom. But don’t you know by now that impossible only applies to other people?”

  Well, I should have known, but it was too late. “Perhaps we’d better let them close up,” I said.

  “They don’t expect us to go anywhere,” Sarah said. “Not in the downpour. I’d very much like another drink. But go if you’re tired, Tom. Paul can walk me back.”

  And the way she looked at me, I couldn’t help but stand up and leave without even offering to pay for anything.

  I sheltered under the awning for a minute or so, waiting to make a run to the arcaded sidewalk on the other side of the street, hoping one of them would call out to me, wondering if there was some way to go back in. There wasn’t.

  I’d assumed that the busboy and hostess were siblings or cousins, but now I wasn’t so sure. The busboy pointed out into the downpour. The hostess laughed. Non posso, she said. Non posso. But then she did run out into the rain, just for a moment, and came back laughing with her arms crossed over her chest.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  “What is it you want?” Bianchi asked. We were in his flat near the hospital, a young man’s apartment in an ancient building, every wall painted blue. He poured me Puglian wine and explained that he’d had a terrifying dream once—he’d wanted to scream, but instead a bluebird flew from his mouth. The walls were painted the color of that bird. He was trying to pay better attention to his dreams, he said. Did I pay attention to mine?

  Far too much attention, I said.

  There were books in French and German fluttering on the windowsills, open on the unmade bed. He crushed garlic on an English dictionary, closed on his kitchen counter.

  “You sleep with your books,” I said.

  “Oh yes. You don’t mind the mess, do you? A man only cleans for his enemies. My father’s words.”

  It was one of many evenings I spent with Bianchi in the week after my second dinner with Sarah and Paul. Most days I walked all morning so that I might be tired enough to sit still and work on dispatches to Marcel in the afternoon. And when I couldn’t work, I loitered in the courtyard of Santo Stefano, trying to remember the music I’d heard over the phone line in Verdun.