They entered Dillard’s room, walking into the rectangle of light cast from the hallway into the room, dimly lit from the single bulb of a table lamp. She looked at her brother in his bed and asked Joe to turn on the room’s ceiling light. Dillard lay on his back, one arm outside of the blanket. A bandage covered the arm from fingers to shoulder, open only where an intravenous tube was needled under the skin of his forearm. His head was also bandaged although his face was not. An antiseptic lotion, however, had been spread across his cheeks and nose and forehead like a glossy layer of film on his skin. His eyes were closed. He breathed with difficulty through his mouth, his breath barely passing through the gauntlet of his swollen throat.
Joe recognized Dillard’s labored wheezing, having heard similar from men caught in the mustard gas. Dillard’s lungs and throat had been damaged from heat and smoke, and now each breath became a battle. He had seen men who had lived through a gassing, like Diamond Dick Quire, but he knew also that for most men whose breath became such a difficulty they did not survive. Eventually Dillard’s lungs might fill with fluid or his throat might constrict or some infection might take hold elsewhere on his burned body, and he would not be strong enough to fight it off.
Joe could see the man dying without ever regaining consciousness, without him being able to tell Joe why exactly Marcel had killed Gresham, without telling the history of those treasons. He could see Dillard dying without ever telling the police who had killed him, leaving them to continue their assumption that Joe was responsible, regardless of what Marie might say. He could see Marie’s brother dying without ever again telling her that he loved her. He could see all that because he had seen all that before.
He watched her bend close to the bed and whisper words lightly into Dillard’s ear. He could not make out the words, but as she spoke softly to her brother, a tear ran from her eye and dropped onto the bed sheet. Dillard’s eyelids fluttered, but did not open. When Marie knelt to bended knee beside her brother’s bed, pressed her hands together and began to pray, Joe felt a lump grow in his throat.
He had not prayed since the war. When he had then it was more out of fear than belief. Watching her silently pray, her lips moving and her head bobbing with her words and silent crying, he considered offering his own prayer. For her and for Dillard, for Gresham and Huntington, for himself, for the thousands of men who had died at Champagne, for his mother and father who had died long ago. But he had quit believing. He had quit believing in so many things that he couldn’t bring himself to offer any words. He opened his eyes and watched Marie continue her own prayer, her hands now holding her brother’s hand.
Joe felt that he was a voyeur looking into someone’s very private sanctum. As quietly as he could, he opened the door behind him and slipped from the room. The same people were in the hallway, their eyes still averted as they walked along the hallway. The same woman was sitting, now with her head lain back against the wall, and the same boy remained standing next to her, his hand still on her shoulder. They had been joined by three others, an old man and woman and another woman. Joe met the eyes of the old man. He saw how the old and the young and the women carry the world’s grief.
He stood to the side of Dillard’s door, leaning back against the wall, his feet together and his eyes watching the shadows of passing people on the floor in front of him. It was not long before Marie left the room and joined Joe in the hallway, her eyes wiped clear of tears but left puffy and red. She looked at him. They left without speaking.
Outside the hospital, street lamps were bright and wedges of light came from building windows. The sky above, where he could see it through the boundaries of buildings, was black and hollow, empty and immense.
Joe took Marie by the arm, turning her gently toward him. “I’m sorry for your brother,” he said.
Marie nodded and swallowed hard. “I prayed for him to not suffer. I can see that he will die, and I prayed that he die soon.” He could see tears begin to well and he took his handkerchief and gave it to her. She took it and dabbed softly at her eyes.
Joe pressed his lips to her forehead and laid her head against his shoulder. He could feel her staggered breathing. “Where do we go now?” he asked.
She pushed away from him and looked around as though she did not know where she was. “Home,” she said. “I think I will go home.”
“Marcel was not here,” Joe said. “He’s certain to be waiting at your home.”
“I do not care about Marcel.”
“You should.”
“I do not care about anything.”
Joe felt like saying that he knew that was not true, for he had seen how deeply she cared about her brother.
He said, “You should not go home tonight.”
She looked at him.
“Is there somewhere you can stay, someone you can stay with for at least the night?” He added, “I’ll come see you tomorrow, to make sure everything is all right.”
She considered it for a moment.
Her breath caught in her throat as she spoke, “Yes. I have a friend nearby I can stay with. On rue Dante not far from where I live. She will let me stay.”
He walked with her to her friend’s apartment. They walked in silence with their hands in their pockets, their coats buttoned tight, their collars up against the wind and gathering cold. The short bridge on which they crossed the Seine was cold and wet. Bare trees on the quai stood in stark relief against the night sky. The lamps were alive, but the night was still dark and darker still when they turned off onto the unlit side street that led them to rue Dante.
A woman answered the door following the second knock. Marie talked to her in French. The woman nodded, looked at Joe with suspicion. She said something and Marie agreed.
Turning to Joe, Marie said, “She is wary of you.”
“That’s okay,” Joe said. “I probably don’t look like the most trustworthy Yank,” and told her that he would talk with her the next day. He took her hand, cold and dry but strong, and told her to sleep well. Not too far away, the bells in Saint Sèverin rang on the hour. He heard them count the strikes but tried to not think of them, whether the bells were tolling for him.
As he walked away, he heard the door close and latch shut behind him and felt their eyes watching him through the slightly parted curtains of a window.
X
It is Friday morning. . . . All around, as far as the eye could reach, the countryside lay bathed in a gracious peace, and through the clear, sunlit air, from beyond the sky-line, came these awe-inspiring sounds. . . . . [S]omething tremendous and awful is going on. What it is, whether it is we, or the French, or both, I cannot, as I write these lines, yet tell. But I think that it is likely to be the rolling thunder of French guns.
—Dr. George Wegener, Cologne Gazette 25 September, 1915
AFTER RETRIEVING HIS VALISE FROM LE BAR DIX AND GIVING THE waiter the other hemisphere to the bill, he walked to a Metro station. The ride was quick, with only two stops to slow the run, and as it was hours past midnight, few people were aboard and those who were appeared closer to sleep than wakefulness. He found Quire’s address near the La Villette area of Paris easier than he thought, a second floor studio off a narrow and dark cobblestone street in a building with a crumbling brick exterior. With its wide wooden doors fronting the street, the building’s first floor appeared to be some sort of garage or warehouse. As he mounted the stairs, however, he swore he could smell cattle, the familiar saccharine musk of their breath and their deposits.
Quire answered soon after Joe knocked, stepping aside and inviting Joe inside the small apartment. He held a pistol in one hand, a drink in the other.
“If I’m ever shot again,” Quire said, holding up the glass of amber liquid, “I’m damn sure going to have some anesthesia nearby. That last time near Saint Mihiel I had to sit in the goddamn mud for two frigging days with a German slug in my leg before anyone found me. That won’t happen again.”
Joe grunted in agreement, steppin
g past Quire.
“The being shot ain’t as bad as the fact that my hip flask ran out of Trench Lightning after the first day. That’s sorrowful, not having a whiskey to finish your evensong with.”
Quire’s was a small, square room with an old carpet over pine planks worn brown and smooth from use, a brass bedstead with an unmade bed of wool army blankets, brown and green. A large window opened to the street with a wardrobe on one side, table and chairs on the other. Thick curtains hung together on tarnished discs from a brass rod. Another table, a sideboard more like, was against another wall with a washbasin on top and towels folded neatly next to it. The washbasin was brown and shiny from use. An expatriate’s apartment, a flop for a bohemian bum.
Quire nodded toward the valise in Joe’s hand. “How was the trip?”
“Not good.” He smiled.
“Why not?”
“Give me a minute. Let me catch my breath.”
Quire tilted his head motioning for Joe to sit on one of the bentwood chairs next to the round table and he sat in the other. He squinted at Joe through his bruise-colored eye that had turned more yellow ochre than any other color. His feet were bare and his hair uncombed, while he sipped at the amber drink held in his glass. “Want one?” he asked Joe, extending the glass for Joe to see its contents.
“I do,” Joe said, “but not right now.”
“Suit yourself.” Quire smiled and drank the last of his whiskey in one quick gulp. He winked at Joe. “A ruddy cup of luscious liquor. Fills you with the Dutch on dark nights.”
“You still carrying your pistol?”
Quire winked at Joe. The wink was more of an attempt as Quire’s eye was still colored and swollen. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, prepare to die.”
“And you think someone’s out to shoot you?”
“None ’cept that little piss-ant that said he’d do exactly that if I helped you. And after you told me about all your friends turning up deceased, I figure the odds are good. While my life may not have much direction, I’m not quite ready to cash it in.”
“That’s good,” Joe said. “You have that blonde chippy to think about come St. Catherine’s Day”
“Ah, yes, and she’s a good thought to think about.” Quire poured himself another couple of fingers from his bottle of Bushmills. “To modern women,” he offered and drank half the glass and nodded. “Good stuff.” He put the glass on his table and crossed to the unmade bed, sat to remove his shoes, and begin undressing. “You like my humble abode?” he asked.
Joe looked again at Quire’s small apartment. The ceiling of the tiny apartment was high, but the walls stood so close and tight that the room had the feeling of a coffin. It was warm even though Joe could not see any stove. And he still smelled cows.
“Is that cattle that I’m getting a whiff of?” he asked.
“Yes . . . shit,” Quire said. “Cow shit. It’s part of my gas treatment.”
“Your gas treatment?”
“Yes, the fucking gas treatment.” With pants unbuttoned and shirt untucked, he walked back over to the table for his glass and drank most of his whiskey. “I signed on with some crazy Russian bastard who took six months’ rent on this place and told me that smelling cow’s breath will heal me. It’s healed all right. I don’t want to smell another damn bovine beast again in my short damned life.”
Joe shook his head. “That’s a new one. Smelling cow’s breath as a treatment for a gassing.”
“And cow shit.”
“And cow shit.”
“I met some expat Russians who had taken a few gas attacks on the Eastern Front before Lenin took over and rent hell. These Russians told me about this guy—looks like flogging Rasputin, all dressed in black and all. He looked like the black angel of death the first time I saw him. He damn well may be. But I guess he’s no crazier than the last treatment I tried. Some frog doctor in Auteuil who forced a balsamic gas into my lungs with a tire pump about five, six times a week.”
“A bit of the hair of the dog that bit you?” Joe asked.
“I suppose. Felt more like a back-assward enema. I left that French quack and signed on with this Russian quack, and I imagine I’ll still die before I see thirty.” He drank a little more and nodded toward the wall. “The woman in the next room, some English writer dame with tuberculosis, a pretty little thing but not much for fun, she feels like she’s taken a new lease. Me, I’ve decided to go down drinking.” He lifted his glass and drained the last of the whiskey in a loud gulp.
He shook the alcohol down and asked, “And so what’s with you, mon ami?”
Joe told him about the day’s events—the trip to Tours, Dillard’s room, the newspaper article, the real Marie.
“Always a dame, ain’t it,” Quire said once Joe had finished. He shook his head and slumped his shoulders. “And no photos in the newspaper?”
“No, but I’d expect one of me soon.”
“I suppose that means that we have to act soon or you should plan a trip to the German frontier and lose yourself with some fräulein.”
“No,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I don’t want this dogging me the rest of my life, however short it may be.”
“So, then, what’s the present plan?”
“I’m not sure. I need some sleep first. Tomorrow it may all come to a head, and I’d like a little backup with me when I do it. I’ll be going to Marcel’s house.”
“You know where he lives?”
Joe waved the paper.
Quire cocked an eyebrow and asked with more than a hint of anticipation, “You’re set on killing him then?”
“No. Not unless I have to.”
Quire again walked to the bed that lay out unmade and sat in a slump on the mattress. He placed the revolver beside him. “What the hell,” he said. “We’ll take it to him. His men give us shit, we shoot their asses.”
“You looking to die young?”
“The young, they do die good . . . don’t they?” He tried again to wink at Joe.
“I hope not to find out.”
It was past sunrise when Joe finally laid down on a pallet of coats, towels, and blankets. He had been awake and active for a long time, nearly twenty-four hours, and he fell asleep quickly. While his sleep was not restive, it was at least long. His dreams visited him again and his mind whirled on thoughts he could not fully conjure, the one thought nagging at his mind as a splinter works under the skin. He came full awake in late afternoon and realized what had been bothering him since the previous night.
Why had Marcel not killed Paul Dillard in the hospital? If Dillard talked with the police, then Marcel was ruined. He washed in the sink and even shaved off a couple of days of growth, for looking like a bum did not help his desire for anonymity. He dressed quickly, making as little noise as possible. He could hear the sounds of Paris fully alive outside the window, but he also heard the lowing of cattle from the first floor of the large building.
“Is it time?” Quire asked from his bed. He was up on one elbow, eyes slitted. He reached for his bottle and took a pull before pouring a couple of fingers into his glass. He held out the bottle, “Breakfast?”
“No to both,” Joe said. “I’ve got something to take care of. I’ll be back before too long.”
The Metro was filled with the shuffling silence of a workday. Most people kept their eyes to the ground, not wanting to acknowledge another day behind a counter or under a thumb. The air was humid from the day’s moisture as well as the breath of a crowd of people. Joe stood to the side, collar up and hat down.
He boarded the train with the crowd and rode it from Gare de l’Est to Châtelet, one stop before his destination. Marcel’s men could easily be waiting at the next stop, Cité, for Joe to visit the Hôtel-Dieu. He wanted air and space and options that might not be available to him in the Metro station, so he walked across the bridge to the city’s main island. He kept pace with the crowds of government workers crossing to the island, watching for anyone who might b
e watching for him.
The day was cold and a Paris drizzle was making it colder. However, that made it easier for him to hide within the crowd of winter-dressed men around him. It also made it more difficult to spot anyone waiting for him. He spotted the man anyway. He was the only one who looked to have been standing at the building’s corner for hours. He looked like a wet rat smoking a soggy cigarette.
Joe kept his head down and let the crowd’s current move him safely past the rat. The halls of the hospital were busier, more visitors, more doctors, more patients. Some of the patients were young men, legless and wheeling themselves along the corridors. The hospital was a good place to keep them—the populace did not want to remember the cost of war, not in Paris or London or New York. Out of sight, out of mind. Joe wished he could parade everyone, especially the politicians and the generals and the old men who ran draft boards, into the halls of every hospital to see what those leaders had wrought upon his generation.
Joe slipped into the room across from Dillard’s before removing his hat and coat, laying them on a chair beside the room’s bed. An unconscious man, sleeping or drugged, lay in the bed. Joe looked at him. Old, gaunt, cavernous eyes, breathing through his mouth. Not long for the world.
He stood so that he could watch Dillard’s door. When it opened, a doctor and nurse left, leaving the door wide. Joe saw the crossed feet of someone sitting in a chair along the opposite wall of Dillard’s room. He waited. Carrying his overcoat and fedora, he crossed into Dillard’s room. He had no plan.
Death of a Century Page 24
