by Joanna Scott
Adriana would have been the first to concede that images were easily mistaken at such a distance. She thought she’d seen a man running for his life. She could as easily have seen a bird, a heron, perhaps, or a cormorant, more likely, plunging from the top of the wall to carry food to nesting chicks. Or else she’d seen the shadow of a plane.
She turned to Paolo for confirmation—he would tell her what she’d seen. But Paolo wasn’t there. So eager was he to return to his duties as messenger that he hadn’t even noticed Adriana was no longer following him, and he had gone on ahead. There’d be a great clamor as soon as the adults greeted him in the kitchen and he realized that he’d left the girl behind. The door would swing open, Giulia would rush out to fetch her wayward daughter, Mario would stand glaring in the doorway with Paolo behind him and Luisa behind Paolo. Until then, Adriana would watch and wait, but the vineyard would refuse to give up its secret, leaving her with no choice but to conclude that she’d seen nothing.
WHERE HAD HE ARRIVED, and where was here in relation to there? Here wasn’t clay baked underfoot and coated with dust. There wasn’t terraced with vineyards and olive groves. Here piles of kelp rotted on the rocks between the water and the beach. There he had to check his boots for centipedes. Here he was told to check his boots for snakes. There the rising sun melted like wax over the metal roofs. Here the sun rose like a plump orange from the sea. There he would stand outside the lycée and listen to the teacher playing piano and think that if only he were given the chance, he, too, could play the piano. There he had talent for everything. Here if they caught him they would kill him slowly. He’d been warned: whatever happened, he mustn’t get caught. He knew of soldiers who carried poison in their pockets. But he wouldn’t swallow poison in self-defense. He’d rather defend himself by running away. He was not afraid of being called a coward. Whatever story was told about him, he could tell a better one.
In this current story he, Amdu Diop, wasn’t fleeing from pursuers. He was running toward the next chapter of his life. He was good at slipping away unnoticed because he didn’t begin like other boys his age with a noisy burst of speed. He scuttled like a centipede out of a boot, across a rocky slope, behind a house, and onto the path paved with pieces of broken pottery.
He imagined an angry wife smashing all this pottery, casting one plate after another onto the ground after her husband announced that he had spent what was left of her dowry. He’d learned from listening to conversations about the people of this country that the women preferred to save money and the men liked to waste it. Also, they sat for three hours at their midday meal. Also, they wept over every holy transubstantiation as though from one Mass to the next they’d forgotten about the truth of miracles. Also, they didn’t know how to hide during a night of war. Please, madame and monsieur, do not stay in your houses with the shutters closed. Try instead a cave in the mountains. Or better yet, leave the island altogether and go to some uncontested place, like, say, the Fouta Djallon highlands, and live in peace.
In all operations, Amdu was assigned to the rear. But when the rear was a beach and the only retreat possible was into the sea, he had no choice but to go forward up the hill toward the dark village, where the residents were hiding inside their houses like birds in the tall grass, like little mangemil birds after they have mauled the peanuts. These people were as guilty as the mangemil. They were guilty because they’d tolerated the German occupiers instead of joining the Resistance. But they weren’t the enemy and they didn’t deserve to be destroyed.
While the air assault on Portoferraio was under way, the British admiral T. H. Troubridge directed naval operations from an infantry landing craft in the Golfo di Campo. He had begun by ordering a unit of commandos to capture a German gunboat, and he had watched helplessly from the bridge when a stray German shell hit the gunboat and touched off its ammunition. With the cold ferocity of a man who knew he couldn’t make up for his losses after that, he had sent off the Colonials in their rubber boats across the sandbars, wave after wave of them pushing forward through the storm of fiery shrapnel. Jumping from their boats into the water, the troops had made what the admiral would later describe as “a curious humming” that could be heard even amid the thunder of exploding shells.
Ahead of the main body of the Ninth French Colonial Division, the Bataillon de Choc crept single file up the slopes, but they couldn’t locate the German gun positions in time, and soldiers of the Thirteenth Regiment of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais climbing directly behind them were forced to scatter when the top of the slopes began to flash with interdicting artillery fire. That’s when Amdu found himself alone.
He was known for being useless—he’d killed no one in the battles on Corsica and had managed to lose his regiment more than once, returning only after the fighting was over. Each time he’d been forgiven, not only because he was by far the youngest soldier in the Ninth French Colonial Division, the unofficial mascot who was thought to bring good luck, but because he was the grandson of the great General Jean-Baptiste Diop and was forgiven for anything.
His belt snapped as he ran, spilling the attachments. He grabbed his canteen but left the sheath knife and extra magazines where they lay. Call him crazy, but he had no intention of reloading. Beyond the town he made his way into a dense pine grove, where he stayed until he could count to one hundred between the bursts of gunfire. One hundred and one, and he walked through a meadow in the direction of the sea. One hundred and two, he was flat on his belly, eye to eye with an immobile gray toad the size of an apple, while a plane passed low overhead. One hundred and three, he was on his feet again, scrambling along a muddy gully in search of better shelter.
In this story, he wanted to find a waterfall like the Felu, where he had once traveled with his family. He wanted to fall asleep to the roar of cascading water and then wake and find a monkey squatting next to him, picking burrs from his hair. And then the monkey would surprise him by talking in French and telling him his future.
In the future of this story, he would play lovely music on a piano, and a boy whose name he didn’t know would listen through an open window of the lycée. Many years later the boy would remember Amdu’s music at a moment of indecision. The memory would cause him to choose the path leading to happiness instead of sorrow.
This pleasant story occupied Amdu’s thoughts while he made his way to the end of the field. The moon, bright behind the haze of smoke, silvered the bristles of high grass. He heard the distant sound of an engine, though he couldn’t tell whether it was a motorboat or a motorbike. His father had promised him a motorbike when he returned from the war—this would be his reward for staying alive. Of course he’d stay alive. He didn’t like to speak of it to others, but he knew God had planned an important life for him and through these difficult times would offer absolute protection.
He headed down a road that turned to dirt and led to a row of concrete bungalows perched on the edge of a steep, rocky slope above the sea. Amdu guessed the inhabitants were huddling inside their homes, trying to keep their dogs from barking and their children from crying. The silence was the sound of their fear. They had every right to be fearful, given what the general had told the captains to tell their men at the outset of Operation Brassard: tout est permis. Anyone found by troops of the Ninth French Colonial Division was at risk of being humiliated—or worse. But they didn’t have to fear Amdu, who had been in the war for almost a year and still hadn’t fired his rifle at anything alive. He made no secret of the fact that he would never kill a living creature. He considered himself as close to a saint as he could come without actually communicating with God. At the very least, he was a good man—a seventeen-year-old man with noble aspirations and swift legs. Despite his reputation as a coward, he was liked by everybody who knew him. Even the people hiding in their houses would have liked him if they’d known him. He had come to their island to help them and make friends. But he had no way of declaring his good intentions.
A toad—slightly larger than the one he’d
seen in the field, its gray skin blotched with charcoal patches—hunched lazily on the step of a lopsided well. The toad blinked at Amdu. Amdu blinked at the toad. He wondered what the toad knew of the war. He wondered what had happened to his comrades. He hoped that the German battery had already surrendered and his friends in the Thirteenth Regiment were having a good long smoke now that the invasion was over.
Feeling a sudden urge to participate in victory, he fired his rifle at the moon. He liked to fire his rifle at the moon. It was an irresistible action, though he would always regret it once he remembered that he couldn’t predict where the bullet would come down. But he enjoyed the kick of the grip and the sound of the shot melting into the night air and returning with the loud snap of an echo. It was fun to shoot a rifle without the intention to kill. Yet a soldier should always have a reasonable target—a coffee can across the yard instead of the moon. See what could happen? The falling bullet could hit you in the eye. Fortunately, it didn’t hit Amdu in the eye. It grazed him on the shoulder, stinging like a thorn stings with a quick sharp pain followed by an aching. His own bullet. Except it wasn’t his own bullet. It was the glancing bullet from the rifle of a sniper on the roof of one of the bungalows, though Amdu didn’t realize this until the man fired a second shot, which sent up a spray of gravel as it embedded in the ground beside his boot.
Run, Amdu! Of course he would run. But first he’d slip off the sling of his rifle and grab it by the barrel and send it plunging down the well. Why for heaven’s sake did he do that? Because it wasn’t fair to shoot an unarmed man. But why throw the rifle down the well? Because the well was there. There was not here. Here was where he had to run from, the place where God had failed to protect him.
Amdu, God fails in nothing. Of course—he knew this as surely as he knew his own name. But how do you explain . . . ?
War is war is war. To be alive during a war is to be guilty. Amdu was as guilty as the residents of this island. Amdu was as guilty as his fellow soldiers. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. Be broken, you peoples, and be dismayed. Be wounded in the shoulder. Be bloody and afraid.
Amdu was afraid and would make no secret of this fact to anyone watching, but at the same time he was grateful for his many abilities, especially his ability to run so quickly that he was out of the line of fire and was heading down the steps leading to the beach before whoever wanted to kill him could locate him again in the rifle sight.
Under the hazy moon, the pebbles on this island were as smooth and round as duck eggs and were covered in a yellow film that seemed to radiate a dusty phosphorescence. Amdu was grateful for the moonlight, since it enabled him to see his way. To his right was a small wooden pavilion and to his left was a jetty extending into the sea. He headed in the direction of the rocks, clambering up and over and splashing along the edge of the water.
He was grateful to be able to move among the concealing forms of the huge boulders. He was grateful to find himself alone and far away from the fighting. He was grateful that the pain in his shoulder was no worse than a toothache, and once he’d taken off his shirt, he saw that the blood was hardly oozing at all. The bleeding would soon stop altogether beneath the cloth he’d ripped from his undershirt and twisted around his upper arm. He was grateful to be alive and had faith that whatever happened would be necessary and just. And he was grateful to find a reward for his faith in the form of a rowboat wedged against a grassy point bar. A boat! He could take the boat and row himself back to the ship that had delivered him to this island, the same ship, anchored offshore, that would take him home. He wanted to go home now, please, and take up the important work of ministering to his people. He’d seen enough of war to prefer to avoid it.
Everything was supposed to make sense, even in the absence of understanding. So when Amdu saw the giant toad perched on the bench in the boat, a gray wrinkled mass just sitting there as if it owned the world—by far the largest toad he’d ever seen, bigger than a full moon in the night sky—he took it as a sign of prohibition. If the toad could have spoken, it would have said, Do not take the boat, Amdu! All right, he wouldn’t take the boat. He would keep walking in the direction he’d started, away from all that he wanted to leave behind and toward wherever, scrambling over the rocks and through the shallow water of the estuaries, and when a single plane swooped low between the bordering peninsulas and dropped some sort of cargo into the water—a bomb, Amdu assumed as it was swallowed by the sea, no, an extra fuel tank—he would know for certain that he had been right not to take the rowboat, for if he had taken it he might very well have been floating in the middle of the inlet directly beneath the jettisoned tank. He might very well be dead by now.
He couldn’t know how to interpret in any reliable fashion the mysterious evidence of fate, but so far he hadn’t made any obvious mistakes. The best anyone could do was pray for wisdom and trust lessons learned from past experience. Just as a good farmer will plant millet one year, peanuts the next, and then let the field lie fallow, Amdu, depending upon the situation, would enjoy the company of his family, listen to the stories of his friends, or run from danger. Family, friends, danger. Millet, peanuts, fallow. Yes, everything made sense if you had faith.
He was alive because he had faith. Yet he was being tested. Which way was the direction of happiness? He could keep following the coastline, but this would take him farther away from his regiment. He could retrace his steps and try to make his way back to the well, but this would return him to the bungalows. The only other option was to cut inland and try to find a road leading to the marina where he and his fellows had landed. In all likelihood there would be troops stationed in the central piazza, and they would tell him how to make himself useful.
Between the line of the sluggish surf and the fields were boulders stacked steeply, with jagged footholds. Even without the full use of his left arm, Amdu could climb slowly to the top lip and from there look out over the empty expanse of the inlet. Other than the circle of foam still floating over the spot where the fuel tank had disappeared, there was no sign of life—no sailboats moored offshore, no planes overhead. He knew that the marina was hidden behind the far peninsula and figured that he could reach it by traveling a wide arc up and around the bungalows and past the meadow. As long as he moved furtively, he would be safe.
Family, friends, danger. Millet, peanuts, fallow. Folly is a joy to him who has no sense, but a man of understanding walks aright. Amdu walked aright through the low grass and onto a dirt lane that led directly uphill between halves of an old orchard. The grass in the field was waist high, and vines webbed the neglected fruit trees. Puddles of rotten peaches filled the night air with a sweet, foul fragrance, giving Amdu the impression that the yield of this land was excessive. The soil was too fertile, the sea too calm, the people lazy.
He thought about his own land—there instead of here. The warmth of fine, silky sand beneath his bare feet. The smell of fresh rain on the streets of Dakar. Riding the train between Dourbel and Kaolack—looking across the compartment at his father, who was reading a book. Wasn’t his father always reading a book? His face hidden behind the pages, his thoughts as far off and unfathomable as the action of Operation Brassard. What was going on, and where? Amdu could only make his way slowly toward the place where the action had commenced. The beginning of a plan following the sequence of thought, one idea leading to another, logic supported by belief in logic, belief in logic supported by faith in God, faith in God reaffirmed in an unfamiliar setting.
He was somewhere on an island, somewhere in the night. And at the same time there was something calling or crying, a shrieking sound—he couldn’t tell whether it came from an animal or a person, but the plea conveyed by the sound was easily perceived. If help was needed, danger was present. And what do you do in the presence of danger, Amdu? Run!
He ran. But in order to escape danger he first needed to identify the scope of it, so instea
d of running away from the awful shrieking sound of pleading, he ran toward it. He ran toward chickens being slaughtered, cats being swung by their tails, beached whales, and warthogs being devoured by hyenas. He ran toward monkeys gabbling in French. He tore through bramble wheels, damp from the previous night’s rain, stumbled over the broken cylinder of an old wasp nest, kept running through the orchard toward a shed, where whatever had been calling for help, calling directly to God’s servant Amdu Diop, offering him the chance to do a good deed, had already fallen silent.
Amdu gazed through the broken window of the shed, through the pane on the lower right. A flashlight propped across the rim of a wheelbarrow lit up the aftermath of the show. Amdu’s fellow soldiers crowded inside—four or five of them from another regiment in the Ninth French Colonial Division. He recognized at least one, a captain he’d seen conferring with General De Lattre de Tassigny en route from Corsica. Now he was talking to his own men, muttering something in his own language, and they were muttering back, arguing about who and what while at their feet, with her bare legs spread at the thighs but crisscrossed at the ankles, lay a young girl, naked and ribboned with fresh blood.
Don’t look, Amdu! Too late. He was a dark face at the broken window, looking and seeing. Too late. He couldn’t unsee what he couldn’t deny was beyond the general’s liberal directive of tout est permis. Surely this act wasn’t covered by tout est permis. Anything goes . . . except this. This was not war. This was something else, unworthy of a witness. Amdu wished he’d remained with his own regiment. Too late. And what would have shored him up under other circumstances—the Lord delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders—only reminded him of his mistake, which was to have lived long enough to have seen too much and then to stand there stupidly until he was seen, drawing one by one the attention of the men, their gazes locking, the captain the last to notice Amdu but the first to react, slowly shaking his head, mouthing what Amdu interpreted as a description of what would happen to him if he ever dared to speak of what he’d seen.
