A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  “Get yourself up and dressed, why don’t you, Stanton. No malingering, now.” Knowles said this with a grin. The infectious disease expert malingering: that was the latest twist in the ongoing drama of his recovery. “You’ve got a visitor waiting to see you. Very exciting. It’s”—a pause for effect, and a slight inflection, as if to indicate the visitor was a girl—“your medic.”

  “You’ve decided to let me go back to work?”

  The grin turned sly. “Guess we can risk it for a half hour.”

  Slowly Jamie got dressed, not in his uniform, but in the loose clothing the hospital provided for those patients who were up and about. The ensemble included felt slippers with cardboard soles. Jamie’s roommate, Fred Paston, was in fairly bad shape, his head entirely wrapped in bandages, including his eyes. Only his mouth and nose were visible. Paston seldom spoke. Following the example of Nurse Nichols, Jamie often spoke to him.

  “I’ll be back,” he said as he left the room. Slowly he made his way down the hall to the visiting area. He stood close to the wall, his left hand palm outward, so he could steady himself against the wall if he needed to. When he lifted his arm this way, his shoulder ached a bit from the shrapnel wound; he’d check in with the hospital’s physical therapist about this.

  Like the school in Relizane province, this hospital was French colonial, with archways, carved latticework, and multicolored tiles, blues, greens, reds covering the walls. Everything was clean and open, with warm breezes blowing through wide windows on all sides. It was nothing like the hospitals of Philadelphia, or New York.

  “Boy, am I glad to see you!” Lofgren exclaimed. And he did look glad. Jamie had forgotten how young Lofgren was, just twenty.

  They sat down on army-issue metal chairs just inside a narrow balcony filled with pots of geraniums. Jamie looked out at the hospital gardens, glimmering in the sunlight—pure whites, bright greens, dazzling yellows, exaggerated and precise. Too precise. The clarity and precision hurt his eyes. Probably some neurological damage, he self-diagnosed. The garden had a fountain, and the fountain worked, tossing water through the air.

  “How’s the work going?” Jamie asked. He spoke against a background of falling water.

  “I’ve got the report right here.” Lofgren undid the clasps on his pack and found the report. “I’ve been doing exactly what you taught me. The results have been really good. I mean, I hope you think so. I made this copy for you, sir. You can keep it.”

  Jamie assumed this was a nice way of saying that the original had been sent to Washington for Dr. Bush, and for Nick and Chester Keefer. Jamie took the report and leafed through it. It was long, and carefully done. Impressive. He didn’t want Lofgren to know that he couldn’t focus on reading it. “This is terrific, Lofgren. I’ll study it later. In the meantime, let me ask you something. I’ve been a little confused. Anybody else make it out that day?”

  Lofgren glanced away. “The patient, sir.”

  “The patient?” Jamie wasn’t following this.

  “Yes, sir. Keith Powers. No one knows how he made it, he was in real bad shape by the time the…the new team got to him, but they patched him up and now he’s doing good.”

  “The new team?” Jamie pushed slowly forward. “What happened to Dr. Mueller?”

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “Nurse Nichols?”

  Lofgren stared out the window. “No. That entire surgical team was wiped out. Except for you, I mean.”

  “Me and the patient?”

  “Yes, sir. Like I said.” Lofgren covered his awkwardness with excitement. “Keith Powers—he’s on the penicillin ward. You can meet him. You’ll read about him in the report, too.”

  “Ah.” Jamie felt his energy flow out of him. He was using all his strength just to stay upright. Alice, gone. Pete, gone. But he, Jamie, was sitting here alive in the visiting room of a French colonial hospital with arched windows and a vaulted ceiling in Algiers, enjoying the morning breeze off the Mediterranean. How could he account for that?

  “And remember that gangrene patient? Shrapnel in the thigh, a minor wound that turned into gangrene?” Lofgren was saying, filling the silence. “Fully recovered! He’s back at the front. He was awarded a Bronze Star! Your decision to double the dose, that’s what saved him, sir.”

  “Thank you, Lofgren. You took care of him, too. In fact, you must have seen him through the worst of it, after the bombing raid.”

  Lofgren blinked in a kind of embarrassed gratitude. “You coming back to work soon?” Lofgren looked suddenly crestfallen, like he might cry. He was no more than a boy, far from home, and Jamie was old enough to be his father.

  “I’ll be back soon. As soon as I can. Can’t be spending my time lounging around here.” He stood. He swayed, and Lofgren reached for his arm. Jamie pushed him off. With that, Lofgren looked hurt. Jamie was filled with regret but made a joke of it.

  “Got to get used to my own two feet, eh, Lofgren? Got to build up my strength, to get back sooner.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lofgren was happy again.

  “You’ve done a great job. I’ll make sure the commanders know that you’re the one who carried this forward while I was recovering.”

  “Thank you, sir. Well, I’ve got to get back. Almost time for the next round of shots. We moved to a different location, just a half hour from here.”

  “Tell me something, Lofgren, before you go. What’s the date?”

  “The date?”

  “The neurologists keep asking me to tell them the date—it must be on their checklist for making sure I haven’t lost my mind. But since they never tell me what the date is, I never know the correct answer.”

  “January fifth.”

  A long time had passed. “So I missed Christmas.”

  “Guess you did, sir. We’ll have another celebration in the ward when you get back.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be counting on it.”

  “Good-bye, then, sir.”

  “Good-bye for now.”

  Jamie watched Lofgren go. Then he walked slowly to his room.

  “I’m back,” he said to Paston, immobile on his bed. Jamie stood at the window and stared out at the palm trees and at the Mediterranean beyond.

  Chance—that’s all it was. Governing who lived and who died. He wouldn’t let himself think about Alice, or about Pete. Instead he’d think about returning to work. He’d have time enough to think about the dead when he returned to America.

  Home. All at once he knew he’d make it, just as surely as a few months ago he’d known he wouldn’t. Why? He had no idea. A conversion inside himself. Inexplicable.

  January 1943. He’d missed Christmas and New Year’s both. He needed to write a letter to Claire. Surely he could manage a few sentences. The prospect of this task gave him more energy than he’d had in a long while.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Claire and Charlie spent their Saturday afternoon doing chores around the neighborhood. They went to Bigelow on Sixth Avenue between Eighth and Ninth for a few pharmacy items. Using their hoarded ration allotment, they bought new shoes for Charlie, who’d outgrown his old ones, at the kids’ shoe store on Eighth Street. They went to Wanamaker’s on Broadway at Ninth, where Claire bought a new lipstick. On their way back, they made a stop at the Marshall Chess Club on West Tenth Street to pick up a schedule of classes for children. Charlie wanted to learn to play, and his grandfather was considering signing up for the kids’ class, so they could learn together. As always on Saturday, Claire and Charlie went to Zito’s on Bleecker Street to buy bread, a long, crispy loaf whose yeasty aroma wafted up from its wrapper. Bleecker between Sixth and Seventh was lined with pushcart vendors selling vegetables. Not too much variety at this time of year, but Claire stocked up on onions and potatoes. Crossing Seventh, they continued down Barrow, a quiet, tree-lined street with narrow sidewalks. They stopped beneath the windows of the Greenwich House Music School to listen to a violin class for children.

  “Would you like to
learn to play the violin?” Claire asked.

  “No!” Charlie said adamantly. Horrified, he turned and walked away, as if the merest hint of an interest in music would condemn him to years of lessons. Claire loved him so.

  When they reached the corner of Bedford, they turned right. A perfect afternoon, Claire thought as they continued along past the town houses and small tenements. The bright sun melted the snow at the curbs, creating a dirty gray slush—but a thin coating of clear water flowed from beneath the curbside slush and seeped over the street to make it shimmer and glow.

  Seeing the light upon the street made her want to set up her darkroom again, to create prints that captured that shimmer of sunlight. After the ransacking of her home, the cleaning crew sent by Miss Thrasher had done a terrific job, but a cleaning crew couldn’t put everything back to the way it had been. Now, finally, she was feeling ready to make things whole again.

  Claire and Charlie reached the corner of Grove Street and turned onto their block.

  Charlie saw him first.

  Jamie had a key, but he didn’t feel he had a right simply to unlock the door and let himself in. He’d been out of the country for almost three months. He hadn’t seen Claire in six months. He’d had an affair with a woman who died beside him. He’d seen things he could never bring himself to recount. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Claire waited for him. And yet, he felt he needed to be invited in. He knocked on the door. He heard Lucas barking within, in greeting or warning, he couldn’t tell.

  No one answered his knock. So he sat down on the cleanly shoveled front stoop. Dirty snow was piled along the sidewalk. It was the weekend. Maybe she’d turn up. Even if she didn’t, he was content to stay here for a while and get his bearings. There wasn’t really anywhere else he wanted to go. His residence rooms awaited at the Institute, so he had a place to sleep, making him luckier than most, in view of where he’d come from. The day was cold, but he wore the army-issue winter coat he’d worn through North Africa, where the days were hot and the nights frigidly cold. So he was lucky on that score, too: he had a warm winter coat.

  The clinical trials in North Africa were complete, because the penicillin supply was used up. Rather than send more, Dr. Bush had opted for the next trials to take place in the Pacific, under conditions of jungle warfare. Nick would be in charge. Jamie would consult with Nick for the next several weeks, then Nick would travel to San Francisco and ship out to the battle islands of the Pacific. As Jamie was packing up in North Africa, his main concern had been for Lofgren. He’d tried to get him into a training program for physical therapy, or at least into a supervisory position, but North Africa was seeing fierce fighting now and medics were needed at the front, so that’s where Lofgren was sent. Jamie had given the young man his address and asked him to be in touch, in that probably far distant day when the war would be over.

  Jamie had written to Claire a half-dozen times, although he didn’t know if she’d received the letters. He’d received none in return, which might mean only that the military mail service hadn’t been able to find him.

  Maybe if he’d been in North Africa longer, he would have become accustomed to broken bodies that had once been filled with the strength and glory of life. Recently, he’d been having memory flashes of the bombing raid. He wished he still had amnesia, a lesser evil than the memories: the screaming, the begging, the moaning, maybe his own. The rusty smell of blood. The taste of explosives.

  He propped his duffel against the wrought-iron banister and rested his head against it. At least his headaches were gone. His hearing seemed normal. His ability to concentrate was gradually returning. Sometimes his shoulder ached, especially when he carried his duffel. He couldn’t believe how tired he still was, even after all the sleeping he did on the boat. He didn’t even go up to the deck when he heard the others cheering at their first sight of the New York skyline and the Statue of Liberty.

  Lucas had stopped barking. The dog was probably curled up asleep just inside the door. Waiting for Claire, just like he was.

  Claire stood where she was, immobile. In the past months, she’d learned to let the events of the world wash over her. Amid the chaos and confusion, she could control so little beyond herself and Charlie. Her dear Jamie…the shock of understanding that he must be dead. The shock of the first letter showing he was alive. His presence now. One shock after another, even as she knew this was the story of families all through the neighborhood and the city and the nation. Still, these were her shocks. She’d received two letters from him, each of which she answered. Then, nothing. Now he was sitting on her front stoop. This was the way it was, this had been written about in the newspapers: moms and girlfriends and wives looked up from their cooking or reading or sewing, or returned home from their war jobs in the factories, and there, standing before them, were the men they loved.

  She moved slowly toward him.

  Charlie was prodding Jamie to get up. “Why are you sitting outside in the cold, Uncle Jamie? Where’s Lucas? Don’t you have a key? I thought you had a key.” Charlie didn’t stop for answers to these questions. “Did you lose your key? I have a key! My mom told me you weren’t dead anymore.”

  Now the door was open, and Lucas burst out, jumping on Jamie.

  “What ship were you on, Uncle Jamie? Where were you in Africa exactly? Will you show me on the map? Did you see my father? What kind of planes did you see? Did you see Germans?”

  Now Claire stood at the bottom of the front stoop. Jamie, Charlie, and Lucas were on top of the stoop, five steps above her. Claire was grateful for Charlie’s hundred questions: the grilling filled the space between herself and Jamie, letting her gradually take him in, feel his presence, understand and sense him once more, before they were alone together.

  Jamie turned to her. “Hello, Claire.” He thought she looked older. Worn down. Her eyes not as bright as he remembered. He didn’t want to think about how he looked; he was certain he looked awful. “Did you receive my letters?”

  “Two letters.” He looked too thin. His skin was gray.

  “I wrote a lot more than that.”

  “I’m sure they’ll turn up eventually.” She gave him a tentative, encouraging smile.

  Charlie had an overnight birthday party to attend at his friend Joey’s, over on Bank Street. Claire and Jamie walked with him to the party at 6:00 PM, along Grove to Bleecker, and Bleecker to Bank. Jamie was glad to be among the oddly intersecting streets, the small cafés and bookshops, the cobblestones, and hundred-year-old town houses.

  “Bye, Mom. Bye, Uncle Jamie.”

  Charlie bounded up the steps to the vestibule of the building where Joey and his family lived, a tenement on Bank Street between Waverly and West Fourth. Joey and Ben waited at the doorway, the steep, dimly lit stairway up to Joey’s fifth-floor apartment visible behind them.

  “See you tomorrow,” Claire called.

  “Have fun,” Jamie said.

  “My Uncle Jamie just came home from North Africa!” they heard Charlie telling his friends. “He was bombed by the Germans!” Suitably impressed, Joey and Ben peered out the doorway at Jamie.

  Claire took Jamie’s arm. “I thought we’d have dinner tonight at the Charles,” she said. “Over on Sixth between Tenth and Eleventh. That’s the elegant French restaurant that just happens to share its name with my son. My treat. In honor of your return.”

  She pressed to go out for dinner before he could ask to stay home, because she felt nervous to be alone with him. She wanted to talk to him, but she didn’t know what to say or where to begin. After imagining this moment so many times, she was now at a loss. Nothing seemed adequate. Her everyday concerns seemed petty compared to what he must have seen and experienced. And what about Nick? She had resolved to keep that from him. But what if Nick himself said something to Jamie about what had happened in Boston? That would be worse.

  For his part, Jamie felt months of tension slowly ease in her presence. They walked on Bank toward Greenwich Avenue. He rel
ived the walk they’d taken through these Village streets on the night of their first dinner together, over a year ago. Already then, he was in love with her. Now, as they crossed Seventh and walked east on Eleventh Street, the slush turned slippery at the crosswalks. The temperature was dropping. How could he ever tell her about Alice, and Pete? About Harry Lofgren? Or his patients? About the whitewashed colonial buildings and the palm trees and the breezes from the Mediterranean? He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell anyone. The memories were too painful. Best to start afresh, telling nothing. Asking nothing. Simply grateful to have made it back, to pick up where they’d left off.

  Turning right on Sixth Avenue, Claire looked up at Jamie with a measure of anxiety and found him scrutinizing her. He stopped walking. He kissed her on the lips.

  The future would take care of itself, she decided, returning his kiss. No confessions were needed. For tonight, at least, the future would take care of itself.

  1:00 AM. At home. Claire drifted in and out of sleep. They lay pressed together with their faces so close that she felt the warmth of his exhalations on her chin. She breathed the very air that he breathed. As she felt herself settle deeper into sleep, she turned. She faced away from him, his arms wrapped around her, their legs intertwined. Having him here, she felt safer than she had in months. She positioned his hand on her breast. He rested his face on the back of her head.

  He cradled her against his body, his chest against her back, the now-soft part of him pressed against her flank, legs against legs.

  This was love, he thought as his body and his usually teeming mind eased into sleep. The thought seemed like a revelation to him. Here was love.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  At 3:10 PM on the third Thursday in February 1943, Charlie was on his way home from school when he felt a catch in his throat. The week had been strangely warm, a February thaw, his grandfather called it. Charlie decided to take the long route home, via Christopher Street, with its small shops and groceries. He had some change in his pocket, but he didn’t have enough for the candy at Li-Lac. Li-Lac was expensive. He stood at the window, peering in at the candies he would have bought if he’d had a few more pennies, and then he turned toward home.