A Dove of the East

by Mark Helprin

  Passenger trains were light shells, whisked effortlessly after the engine in delightful relief. The slower freight trains continued to grind the track as had done the engine, with little contrast. Once in a great while he had seen flat-bed trains loaded with tanks and half-tracks. Always on these one could see soldiers perched on the vehicles. Regardless of the time or place they seemed to have the same expression, a combination of the joy of riding carefree and a grim feeling of predetermined death. They would be either eating, casting off nut shells or fruit pits into the wake of their convoy, or scanning the countryside while at the ready on doublebarreled machine guns in flimsy sand-bagged positions. It was like riding the back of a dragon. Before the war he had echoed Anns feelings, that there were too many tanks and soldiers and that these were likely in themselves to bring about conflict, like the spontaneous generation of snakes from a horses hair in rainwater. But lying on bales of cloth which had been packed before the war and would be unpacked during the war, he wished there had been more tanks and guns, since a lack of them hadn’t stopped anything. And he wondered why Ann, who was so weak and willing to be weak, had been attacked as if she were armed to the teeth. With this thought, and a terrible hollowness and fear that at last he had been broken, and in one blow, he fell asleep on his bales under stars he could not see on a train which by pure luck was quickly making its way south.

  He was startled suddenly upon waking up in a motionless silence. A blue sky shone through the hatch, and for the first time in days he was able to see perfectly. He had been lying on bales of black felt. Several bees had flown into the car and were having difficulty finding their ways out. The air was different so that he knew he was far away from the yard and sidings of the bombing attack. He looked at himself and felt his face. The cuffs of his pants were burned away and his ankles blistered. His clothes were ripped and full of dried blood, and he felt a wound on his skull and across his forehead. Really awakening he breathed in tensely and thought of Ann. He felt his wallet in his pocket, cursed himself, and prayed that her train had gone directly south. He climbed out of the dark into a freight yard in Provence, in a town he knew well. For some reason, even though he had money, he set out by foot for Aix, fifty kilometers distant. But he was more exhausted than he thought and when he stopped to rest by a bridge he fell asleep and did not awaken until evening. Then he drank water from a cool stream and his rest, the fresh water, and the descent of evening made him feel again like a man. Nevertheless he did not look like one, and when he stopped a truck loaded with mirrors for a ride to Aix the driver would take him only if he rode in the back. “You are ugly, that’s why,” the man said, and Leon watched himself for an hour or more in the very dimly lighted mirrors. He looked like a Napoleonic infantryman in the Russian winter. This, the fact that he had survived, and the joy at closing the distance between himself and his wife whom he imagined in the garden at the house of Pellegrin made him laugh out loud over and over. He was rugged. What a tale to tell the Pellegrins. He was alive and soon he would see Ann. But his wounds began to pain him and he realized how hungry he was.

  The driver rapped on the panel of his compartment. ‘Aix, Aix,” he said, and Leon climbed out just before the truck drove off into the dark. He was in the main square by the fountain and could not believe what he saw.

  Literally scores of young men and women, in tuxedos and white ball gowns, were clustered around the fountain, talking and laughing, with champagne glasses in their hands. Telling the virtues of the town, the fountain splashed clear water on clear light. The night was one of those early summer nights which is thick and beautiful and yet cool enough to accommodate the pale light of the moon. They had just graduated. To him it was unbelievable.

  He went to the fountain and washed himself. Several of the young people came up to him and one boy handed him a glass of champagne, saying, “Don’t drink from the fountain, drink this.” Leon drank it with the speed of a trout catching a fly, and he was poured another, and then several others until his pain was gone and he began to feel some energy and a great deal of dizziness. They had gathered around and were looking at him as if he were a nice little dog. He felt no anger, and just looked at them and at the lights and water. “I was one of you,” he said, “indeed I was, and in just a few days I have become someone else, never to return. Consider that. Consider that here in your summer of trees and fountain.” He was swaying back and forth, not unpleasantly, and his eyes could not focus.

  “There is an ice age up there you know, in the North. It’s falling down here and will slide over here any time. You know that. You know what’s happening.” The boy closest to him nodded. He had finally spoiled their party, a spoiled party anyway. Here was a wretched creature who said he was from the North, and they became frightened down to the soles of their patent leather shoes. “There’s a war, a war, and I was in it,” he said. He began to weep, swaying back and forth, staring into the fountain and its intoxicating random envelopments, stunning the adolescents all around him. “Take me to the house of Pellegrin,” he commanded forcefully. Two boys helped him to their car.

  The effects of champagne retreated as the little car weaved its way, headlamps beaming, through the walled and gardened countryside quiet but for a din of crickets and the rushing of dark overhead branches. They left him at the gate and he walked up a familiar stone drive to a familiar house which was shut, and dark, and terrifying; and he wailed a cry of despair and horror which silenced the night animals, for even they could sense the upwelling of Hell.

  IN SEPTEMBER of 1947, after he had been with the Free French, and then for several years searched as best he could the D.P. camps and the German records, he went to Palestine. Both sets of parents had never left Paris except on a train to Poland. Beyond names and numbers there was nothing more to be heard of them. They had vanished into the soil. They had not even a grave. He returned to the family houses to find other people living in them, quite happily; all the furniture had been taken; the books, diplomas, letters, photographs were gone. He found that under law he still owned his house. An eager lawyer told him of how it could easily be regained. Leon thought for a moment and then simply said, “What would I do with it?” and walked out.

  He went to photographers in the neighborhood to try to find a photograph of his wife or his parents. They made him pay exorbitantly to search through their files. Thousands of men, women, and children stared out at him, but he found nothing. He had been arrested and his papers had been confiscated. Because of that he hadn’t even a picture, or signature, or anything at all of his wife or parents. He remembered his father in the station, in his jacket. Where was his jacket?

  He went to friends to inform them that he was alive and to seek information. They had none. He did not wish to hear of his mother and father, for they were dead and there was no point in reconstructing those days when he had been absent. But Ann was still alive. Of this he was convinced, since there was no record of her anywhere. No one had seen her, her name was to be found on no lists, there were no rumors.

  It was said that beautiful women survived better than anyone else and he hoped for this. She might have been in England, Russia, France, America, Palestine, anywhere. People in the camps were going to Palestine. He knew that she might not even have been able to return to France, and hoped that she had been in Palestine all during the war. On the train they had discussed it, for although their first choice was America they knew they had no chance of entry. He spent weeks and months imagining her healthy and dark, farming the land and changed. And anyway, although he loved Europe he could not bear to put one foot down after another there. He left for Palestine from Trieste, illegally, but by then he had a talent for such things.

  The Mediterranean—bright and dark, covered with mists of glowing air, surrounded by coasts of white rock and fish-eating cities, divided by islands of pine and citrus, rapid carrier of heat and conflict—enlivened him for a time. Three weeks on the deck of an old ship, with men and women as broken, defeated
, and numb as the rusting iron and toothless rails, made him aware of his strength once again. He was moving once more, as rapidly as when he had fallen into France by silken parachute, or followed an armored column across the Rhine. These wretched refugees even sang, and despite its age the ship went forward, and the waves went eastward, waves which would become a new state, sweeping through it as it grew. They sang “My Thoughts Are Free,” and they sang “The Day Will Come,” and many other songs, so that at night on the small ship by yellow lantern light the new state took shape, in waves of feeling and energy, like a song. The children were given life, born here. And Leon, who had begun to crumble, had a part of him braced. He was again in the deep flux of history, nurtured only by events and hopes. The sun rose and beat upon the green sea. It set, and left its mark of bronze and red on the faces of those who had cast their eyes always to the East. I love, he thought, I must love. If I cannot love Maman, and Papa, and Ann, then I must at least love this land a little.

  And the days passed as they hid behind islands and kept off the sea lanes until one late afternoon as the sun lit the East they found themselves, gasping as if at a stage play, face to face with land on which waves broke hard. A hot sweet wind came off the beaches and mountains. They could see trees ashore. They were face to face with the cliffs of Rosh HaNikra, and the British awaited them with trucks and lights while doglike patrol boats made wakes in lariats and loops and figure eights across their bows and off their stern. They were to be detained. But some decided to take to the water.

  Leon was the first. As part of his training in England before he was sent into France he had to swim a mile every day. After many months of delays he became an excellent swimmer—much more so than he had been, and he had been good. He decided to swim around the British cordon. Although loudspeakers said he would drown, and some unfortunates did, he knew it was just a question of a few hours in the water. He tied his shoes around his neck and jumped into the sea. A second later he felt a splash beside him and from a froth of white emerged a girls head. She said in Italian, since that was the language of the ship, “To swim beyond, no?” and he just began. They started straight north, parallel to the shore. She kept on wanting to go in, but he insisted that they clear the cordon and land where the cliffs came down to the sea. “That’s dangerous,” said the girl swimmer, who was about twenty. “Exactly,” he replied, “there will be no police dogs there.”

  The waves were crashing against the rock as if in a great storm, and some of them flowed into caves where their breaking was trumpeted to the sea. It was getting dim when they made for a large cave, thinking to hide in it for the night and then swim out the next day. The entrance was narrow and surrounded with sharp rocks. They centered themselves as best they could and were swept inwards, almost crashing on a wall of rock. They swam for a while until they reached the back of the grotto and a ledge to which the water reached out and then receded gently. They climbed out and found themselves in a roaring mist. The air was wetter than the sea, the rock salty and moist. In the remaining light he looked at his companion and discovered a beautifully proportioned, darkly tanned half-naked girl. They were exhausted; the waves, noise, and depth of the cave were counters to inhibition. They had after all accomplished a great feat and they were landed. They stared at one another, both of them trembling from the hours of swimming, and she slowly wrung out her shirt. It was in fact a dream situation, but he rapidly found himself feeling nothing. His greater loyalties surfaced as if from the sea. He just stared at her, his heart contained by an open question. All was cold, and dead, and over. He would not marry ever again, or make love, or fall in love. Such would ruin his chances. He simply could not take certain breaths, for fear of toppling Ann into hopelessness. What had she apart from his faith? So he stared dully at this girl who truly was able to impart deliriousness, and the night passed miserably. If he had felt temptation, and if he had felt longing for Ann, they had mixed to become as clean, smooth, and monotonous as the moist green stone which had been ground down by the waves.

  BEFORE DAWN broke he had passed through many an ecstasy and sustained many a second wind. But with the coming of the light he felt drained and quiet, breathing hard and slowly like the dove. He feared that it had been chilled when the fire burned down, and overheated when he built it up again. It looked so much, in its expression, like a human invalid, that he found himself sometimes imagining that he was by the bed of a sick child. But he glanced at its Oriental luminescence, the warmest of colors, reminding him that it was indeed a dove and that he had chosen to remain by its side waiting despite the consequences.

  He had sometimes exercised his wants despite consequences and tugged at the patience of friends, if they could be called that. Unbelievably, he shirked guard duty for a decade or more, being allowed to do so because of his reputation as an intense eccentric. It was not that he wished to avoid work, for work was the only thing left to him, but rather that he genuinely feared to stand watch. He thought the crucial seconds between his sentry’s challenge and a response would be wasted and that he might be killed. This was because he knew he would not shoot a shadow moving toward him on a moon or star lit night, thinking it might be Ann, come to find him.

  She had long ago assumed these proportions, of a shadow or a shade, a walker on the floor of the valley without touching it, a descender from the deep sky, pale and sad, a ghost, a weeping gossamer, as white as powder and as quiet. This was unavoidable, a debt to pay, for in his stronger imaginings she was red as all life, moving, bursting into laughter, singing, fighting him, loving him—and imaginations pendulum had to sway.

  When he had first come to the Bet Shan Valley he had found, as if in coordination with everything else, that the climate was unbearable and the land an infested swamp. But he worked hard to clear it where it was not already cleared. For him it was as if the more beautiful the valley became the more likely that she would suddenly arrive. There was always the faintest hope, like one star on a black night, which sometimes in his dreams became a wall of white light blinding him with happiness as if the next day he would see her, for one never knew. These, while they lasted, were his best times, although extraordinarily bitter afterwards.

  And yet his dreams did not run in place. He knew that everything moves forward, and he had grown and developed despite himself over the years. A film which in 1950 or 1960 had seemed to him to be richer and fuller than life itself, and certainly as real, was upon re-showing no more authoritative as to the depth of things than a fast-moving montage of African and Asian postage stamps—colorful and interesting, but with the flow and humanity of a cogwheel. Things moved forward, and although most of his life had been the history of solitude, a long unbroken color, and although his wisdom had served only to heighten the quality of his sadness, he continued to think that perhaps there would be a day when his unraveled life would again be whole.

  The practice of years on the land made him look up. On a distant hill he saw horses and riders in the heat of middle morning, raising threads of dust. They would soon be upon him. He looked at the dove, its eyes three-quarters closed, and surmised that despite its gentleness it was willed to die.

  And what would the horsemen say, seeing him beside a dove dying rapidly on a palm branch he had cut? These young men would not understand. They did not know what he thought and felt. He was beyond their concern and that was in his view quite right. For they had to grow up and pass their scores of years and enter into history. They too would be old, touched by events younger ones could not understand. They too would go to their graves alone, obsessed with remembrances of a life which in its incredible variation had pushed them out beyond the society of men into quiet places where they could only reflect. Starting on the surface of a sphere, crowded and touching, each man moved outwards so that the longer his life the greater the loneliness around him. Nothing can be done, and there is no comfort in it. There is no comfort in dying, no comfort in growing old. In the end there is no solace even in history. But a
young man and an old man are moved before they die to finish the task of their life. And this, Leon, far from Paris and far from his love, could do.

  A pair of horsemen came down a near hill, raising dust in the white morning sun. They were approaching the grove of trees. Leon looked at the motionless dove, and then at the horses and men galloping toward him.

  The gentleness of a dove is something we cannot understand. Sometimes a fighter, it is not all of one color. But most of all it is moved by quiet love and a wish for simple life among the trees. And when it dies it breaks us apart, for it never thinks of itself. But God protect it if it should die alone, and God protect its poor family.