The Verdun Affair

by Nick Dybek

  “I’m not sure I understand,” I said.

  “Naturally, I cannot promise you that you will find the answers you want, or any answers.”

  I was tired myself, upset myself, so it took me a moment to see in his red, frightened eyes what he couldn’t bring himself to say. And, foolishly, I tried to help. “What would you like me to promise you?”

  Bianchi’s face always told a good story. Just then the story was this: I had said the wrong thing, or said it in the wrong way. But also I had understood him perfectly.

  “We will need to wait several days,” he said. “Until Paul is released from the hospital.”

  Santa Monica, 1950

  I went to the window as I heard the car pull into my drive. Paul opened the door for her. Her face was hidden in the shine blasting off the fender. I’d insisted they come for dinner as soon as she returned from New England—Newport, Rhode Island, as it turned out. On the porch she gave me a very un–New England greeting of a kiss on each cheek. And said, “I’ve been curious to meet you for years, Tom. You’re more corporeal than I imagined.”

  “Should I be insulted?” I asked.

  “You’re real,” she said. “I hope that’s no insult.”

  Her name was Millicent. Her face was as patrician as her name, but her voice and laugh were easy and western. It seemed she had been born in the wrong place, but had been lucky enough to find the right one. California. Certainly the sun suited her skin. And the loose, blue-spotted dress she wore did not suggest temperance.

  Dinner was nothing but pleasant. She and Paul could still make each other laugh, and often did, but I never felt excluded. She taught Theater Arts at UCLA, but her way was not especially theatrical. As Paul had promised, she knew quite a lot about the pictures and showed very good taste.

  After dinner, just as daylight was leaking away, we went out to the back patio. It was too nice an evening not to, though I’d begun to avoid the patio when I was alone. It was hard not to look into the doctor’s yard. I’d seen his daughter once or twice, but, understandably, she ignored the garden. It thickened with weeds, and the flowers wobbled and shrunk. Since no one lived there now, I’d cut the last of the dahlias and put them on my own patio table. They looked rather miserable already, but Millicent complimented them nonetheless.

  Of course, she would have paid the compliment to my wife if I’d had one. And it was easy enough to pretend that Faye was sitting right there, to use the small talk of couples on first dates with other couples. How did you meet? I asked. In Italy, wasn’t it?

  “Don’t bore him, Millicent,” Paul said, but that was all part of their routine; in fact, Paul seemed to enjoy having mastered banal American small talk.

  “I’m still not bored by it,” she said. “I’m sorry you are.”

  They’d met, she said, in 1923, in a town called Sirmione on Lake Garda. She had been staying there with her parents—it was just one stop on the grand tour they’d given their grandly spoiled only daughter. In fact, Paul had met her parents first, during breakfast at the hotel, when she’d been too angry to join them. What was she angry about? She could no longer remember, but it had almost cost her the love of her life. She had promised herself that she would never marry a man her parents introduced her to. Then this Austrian with a drooping eye and impeccable manners joined them for dinner.

  “You knew right away?” I asked.

  “Hardly. At the time he looked like a foul ball.”

  I laughed, and looked at Paul, who was smiling politely. He’d heard it all before. “What does that mean?”

  “He looked like he’d been hit hard and in the wrong direction. And my father was far more impressed by his stories about the Hussar days than I was.” She touched Paul’s leg, but she was reassuring me, not him.

  “I think I’ve heard a few of those,” I said.

  “Have you heard this one? Paul once saw a peasant girl leaning from a train window as it pulled into . . . what was the station again?

  “Budapest Kaleti,” Paul said, knowing his cues. “It was obviously the first time she’d been to the city, likely the first time she’d been anywhere outside her village. She was elated, terrified. The face we might make upon arriving on Mars.”

  “That’s it. He could see all that just in her expression. And he also saw,” here, she began to mock his accent in a way I liked, “a profound beauty, having nothing to do with the paradigms of European culture. A vision of great solace as European culture was crumbling all around him.”

  We all laughed. “I’m sure he never saw such a beauty again,” I said.

  “Actually, he did,” she said. “In my face, if you can believe it.”

  “Easily,” I said, because it seemed harmless to flirt with her. And I’d drunk a bit too much.

  “Believe it or not, I could resist.” She cut her eyes at Paul. Her voice thickened. The smile slipped, somewhat. “Paul had the most transparently rote charm I had ever seen. He couldn’t have cared less if it made any impression.”

  The practiced part of her story was obviously over. Paul opened his mouth, but in the end didn’t object.

  “And why was that?” I asked.

  “He was in love with someone else. And trying very hard to behave as if he wasn’t. That was what made him interesting.”

  “That is interesting,” I said. Paul was looking off into the doctor’s tangled yard. It was too dark to see much.

  “Of course, he denied it at first, but how long can you really deny something like that?”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said.

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t. But Paul only managed for an hour or so. We went for a walk around the lake at my parents’ urging, and half the time we talked about her.”

  “What did he say about her?”

  Millicent touched Paul’s leg again; the gesture clearly meant something different this time. She held her hand there. And while I waited for her to continue I wasn’t sure what to do with my own hands. My glass was empty. I’d left the kitchen lamp on, and the window was yellow, full of jack-o’-lantern light. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Anyway, he never stopped making these old-fashioned romantic overtures, and I think he slowly began to mean them. At least I hope he did. But in the next sentence it was back to someone he’d never have. He really is quite an interesting man. But I never would have known that if not for this other woman. When we met, I actually thanked her.”

  I would have liked to have been able to test my voice before I spoke again. “Met her where,” I asked. “In Bologna?”

  “No. It was years later. After we moved to Los Angeles. She lives here.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  * * *

  Paul’s face had all the colors of a bad beating—blue, red, purple, wax-yellow. His right eye was swollen, his left eye covered in gauze. We used to call the men who had to be taken into the ambulance on stretchers “lying-down cases,” and Paul had the look of one.

  During the riot they heard him speaking German, Paul explained, and took him for a Marxist.

  “Why were you speaking German?” I asked.

  “It’s embarrassing. I was in a panic. I was telling myself to stay calm.”

  “It was good advice at least,” I said. He didn’t smile. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t be. It worked quite well, actually. They came at me with truncheons, and soon I became very calm.”

  I helped him light a cigarette. The hospital had discharged him after a day, but only because they didn’t have enough beds to go around after the riot and Bianchi had promised to look in on him at home. He lay propped up in bed in his hotel room, the ashtrays full, clothes and bandages draping the chairs, blood visible on the sheets.

  “Are you sure you’re comfortable here?” I asked. “We could get you a room at a better place.”

  He shook his head and winced.

  “The doctor said I may lose the eye. I’d like to speak to a real doctor before it’s too late. I need to go back
to Vienna as soon as I can travel. For now, I’d prefer not to move one centimeter.”

  “I may have good news for you then,” I said.

  I told him everything Bianchi had said about the new treatment. I told him that he might finally know the truth, that he might finally confront Fairbanks, or Green, or Hagen. Paul listened with what appeared to be indifference. Really, though, it was the face of a badly beaten man who was feeling sorry for me.

  “Tom,” he said eventually. “Do you truly think Mrs. Hagen wants to know who he is? Surely you’ve realized that she doesn’t.”

  I’m not certain I had realized that.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked.

  “Perhaps I don’t care what she wants.”

  * * *

  My agreement with Bianchi was simple enough that we never had to acknowledge it aloud. A lucky thing, as we both would have been too ashamed. In exchange for more aggressive treatment to Fairbanks—call it interrogation, if you want—I offered to help Bianchi and his brother set up a new life in another country.

  Truthfully, I never dreamed Bianchi would accept my offer. I never thought he’d believe I could help him. But supply enough desperation, and anything can be believed. It was a lesson I should have learned well enough—after all, I was desperate too.

  That evening, I had to plead on the good name and credit of La Voix to use the hotel phone. But the minute I heard the crackle of the line and Marcel’s voice on the other end I knew I shouldn’t have called.

  “Tom,” he said, “you’re not hurt?”

  He must have asked the question five times. And when I’d said no in enough ways to convince him, he finally said, “Thank god. It’s been eighteen hours. Dictate to me what you have about the Fascists. I’ll write it myself. The wires are down, you know, nobody here has any details. As long as you are all right this was extraordinary luck.”

  I wasn’t expecting him to ask for details; I’d forgotten my job completely. And the disappointment in his voice at my vague account was evident, even though he was clearly at pains to hide it. I hung up without asking him about Bianchi.

  There was only one other call to make. If it hadn’t been for the pictures beginning to form in my mind—the brother’s dead face under the iodine, the doctor in tears, the consequences of another lie—I wouldn’t have had the courage, if you can call it that.

  * * *

  He picked up on the third ring, perhaps half-expecting chamber music played from Paris. But it was my voice, and I could hear something in it not unlike vibrato. And I could hear the concern in his voice—but when Father Perrin talked to strangers there was always concern in his voice.

  I knew just what to say, and much of it was even true. I told him about Bianchi and his brother, about the Fascists. All I left out was what any of it had to do with me. He did not ask a single question or utter a single pleasantry. But he also did not hesitate.

  Did they need money? Did they have papers? I explained that they needed work.

  “Do they speak French?”

  “The doctor can read it.”

  “He’ll have to do more than that. I’ll need to inquire, but I believe I can help him, hide him from patients until he becomes fluent. If he’s intelligent it shouldn’t take long.”

  “After all, I managed.”

  “I was just going to say.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I can’t imagine you’d call if there was anyone else who could help,” he said, which was certainly true.

  Father Perrin died of a stroke during the Second World War. His bones were placed in the ossuary, just as Father Gaillard’s had been a decade before. That afternoon in Bologna was the last time we ever spoke, though I wrote him often in my first years in California. Over time, his replies grew warmer and longer. He may have even forgiven me. Certainly, he kept his word.

  Bianchi and his brother left for France not long after I did, and Father Perrin eventually found a place for him with Dr. Fenayrou in Rodez. But for a time he and his brother lived in the Episcopal palace—perhaps even in my old room—where Bianchi studied French. It was hard not to smile at the thought of Bianchi and Father Perrin whiling away evenings in the office, playing cards, arguing politics, spitting out each other’s cherished local wines. Sometimes over the years I even imagined myself—why not admit it?—in their company.

  * * *

  It had been a long time—it felt like a long time, anyway—since I’d seen Douglas Fairbanks. Somehow, I no longer expected a mortal man. He’d become so many things at once—Drummond Green and Lee Hagen, ally and enemy, a man I pitied and resented. A man who seemed, as he gazed blankly out, blue circles under his eyes, both alive and dead.

  And yet, looking at those heavy-lidded eyes, I could imagine that someone must have kissed them once as my mother had kissed mine. But perhaps Fairbanks hadn’t had my good fortune, even then.

  He glanced up as we came in, but only the most optimistic reading would suggest he registered much. The single instruction Bianchi had given—especially to Sarah—was not to go to him. The effort was visible on her face.

  A week had passed since the riot. Paul’s eye was still swollen and bandaged, but he walked and talked now without obvious pain. Sarah was dressed in a black blouse and skirt. All that was missing was the veil.

  Bianchi waited until everyone was seated, dabbing at his forehead with a folded handkerchief. The room smelled of layers of Sarah’s perfume. The flowers had been replaced by neatly stacked Boston newspapers; on the windowsill sat an oval picture frame holding a girl of eleven or twelve.

  Bianchi cleared his throat.

  “I have decided to pursue a treatment for Mr. Fairbanks that may help us identify him,” he said. We already knew this, so perhaps he only needed to make it real to himself. “The treatment is used by many colleagues. It is very ethical. But it is unethical that you,” he nodded toward the three of us, “should be here. I want to say this to all four of you, in case there are objections.”

  Bianchi blotted his forehead, smoothed the creases of his slacks, blotted.

  “There is only a small risk that it will do Mr. Fairbanks permanent harm, but it will be uncomfortable for him. Are there objections?”

  My objections, if I had any, were to the way Sarah sat, angled toward Fairbanks, to the way her jaw tremored as if in response to his. I objected to the fact that I no longer knew who I was trying to help or why.

  “Aren’t you going to tell us what the treatment is?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes. If you want, I will inject two ccs of trementina into the patient’s thigh. His body will respond as if he is ill. He’ll develop a fever, maybe for several days. It is possible that in such a condition he will be more receptive to our questions. Negativism has been known to break down under fever.”

  “What is trementina?” Sarah asked.

  Bianchi shrugged. “The English word, I don’t know.”

  “Turpentine,” I said. “The English word is turpentine.”

  “Yes, turpentine. Do you object? Does anyone? I include you in the conversation, Mr. Fairbanks.”

  I did not object. Sarah did not object. Paul did not object.

  Fairbanks did not object when Bianchi stuck him with the needle. He did not object when the abscess bubbled up on his pale leg, or when Bianchi lanced it with the same needle and rolled out a white bandage.

  “How do you feel, Mr. Fairbanks?” Bianchi asked. Fairbanks did not answer.

  “It will take time—hours, I think,” Bianchi said, addressing the rest of us, “before the fever develops.”

  Sarah had said almost nothing since the turpentine, and Paul had said very little the entire afternoon. They both sat in their straight-backed chairs, looking, I have to say, as if they would rather have been almost anywhere else.

  “I’d like to begin as soon as possible. Forty degrees may be high enough, I think. It could be in the middle of the night. Perhaps all of you would like to stay here to wait? I’ve cleared a r
oom for you, Mrs. Hagen.”

  “Actually, I’d rather not be alone,” Sarah said.

  * * *

  “The beds are soft,” Sarah said. “But Bianchi must know we won’t sleep.”

  Outside the window there was the blue darkness of late summer. The heat of some animal lying in the weeds. The trickle of the fountain in the courtyard. A bright moon, the light crawling toward Sarah’s single bed on its hands and knees. There was nothing to do but wait. I felt surprisingly calm.

  * * *

  “Could you eat something, Mrs. Hagen?” Paul asked.

  “Could you?”

  Paul didn’t really look like he could eat. He’d said almost nothing for hours, no one had.

  “I intend to try. I managed to go for a walk today and came upon a bakery, baking raisin bread. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t say amazing, no.”

  “The city almost burned down a few nights ago, and they are already back to baking bread, baking Austrian bread. I find that amazing.”

  Paul slid the loaf from its paper.

  “I haven’t eaten today, actually,” Sarah said. She accepted a piece of bread and I tried some too, which seemed to please Paul.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, as we chewed, “if you went walking after mass on Sunday, the whole city smelled like raisin bread.”

  “Don’t they bake it on Sundays anymore?” Sarah asked.

  “Some do. But the smell is different.”

  Silence again. With the window open you could just hear the last cars of the evening grinding along the boulevard. A ticking from Paul’s pocket watch proved that it had survived the beating.

  “For us, it was bluefish in mayonnaise,” Sarah said after a long pause, “on Sundays.”

  “What’s a bluefish?”

  “They have the strength of ten fish, and taste like it. My father used to say that.”

  “That’s the typical meal of Bostonians?”

  “Just in my family. It was my mother’s favorite food. I suppose part of what I disliked was that she liked it so much. I wonder if I’m still so wicked.”