Peace

by Richard Bausch

  He raised the carbine again, sighted, and fired.

  The shot went off into the night, echoing far, and the figure dropped over, was still. Marson waited, believing that there might be others, that another figure, other figures, would come, and he would shoot whoever tried to help the one down, and he realized that he was now, himself, a sniper.

  But no one came. Nothing stirred. The shape lay in the snow, perhaps a hundred yards away, quite still.

  Marson did not know how long he waited. But finally he got to his feet, edged forward, running at a crouch to the next tree, keeping to the tree line. When he came level with the shape, he waited a few more minutes, then stepped toward it, feeling the wind that had risen, as if it were an opposing force. He felt that his mind had never been more clean, nor more empty. He had the sense, again without words, that life—all life, the life he had led and the life he had come to—had never been so suffused with clarity, a terrible inhuman clarity, made utterly out of precision, like the precision of gear and tackle in a machine. Except that he understood, in a sick wave, that this was utterly and only human. He walked a few paces away and retched onto the snow. He looked at the thickly darkened sky and the field and experienced an overpowering sense of this as the world, the only world. He walked back to the still form lying there in the snow. In the dark of the field, he looked at the man he had killed, and was surprised to see that it was not a German soldier but an Italian, with rope-soled shoes and a German officer’s coat over him against the cold. Probably the coat that had not been with the body of the dead officer who had served as a decoy. And this was just a bandit, a killer moving among the armies. The face was dark, thin, heavy jawed, bearded, with high cheekbones and a narrow cut of a mouth. Something lay on one of the black-whiskered cheeks, and Marson saw that it was a tooth, a molar, with its little extensions of bone. It made him sick again to see it. He moved the jaw, closed it. He took the sniper’s scoped rifle away and threw it off into the snowfield. It was just him now, and the dead. Corporal Marson looked again at the open space and the tree line. This was the sniper. The rifle he had was scoped. It was the one.

  He stumbled back out of the clearing and headed down to catch up with the others, moving quickly, as if running away from what he had just done. He was certain that he would not overtake them. He did not feel sick now, so much, but empty. It seemed that all the human parts of him had gone, had leeched out of him. He took a step and said his own name, and then said it again. It was just hollow sound. He knew nothing but the bitter cold and the silent woods, his own feet breaking through the crust of snow, the pain in his foot, the distant memory of a street and a house, a pregnant woman. “Do your duty,” his father had said. And he could not find in his heart what the word meant anymore. Nothing meant anything. The particulars were all broken. Every single unabstract thing he thought glared at him, like an accusation. And “Do your duty” was an abstraction, and the dead made it seem ugly and irrelevant. Yet there was only the cold, and the way down, the trees bending with the weight of snow, the beautiful complications of windfall and rock and drifting that shaped the winter scene he moved through, and anyone would have said it was beautiful to see. He was alive, walking, breathing, remembering, and he had a deadness at his heart’s core, a numbness, a sense of all his being having been reduced to a kind of obliterating concentration on this slow progress down the mountain.

  He found Joyner and the old man and Asch not very far from where he had left them. Joyner challenged him, crouched behind a tree.

  “It’s me,” Marson said, and felt as though he had lied. “Why haven’t you gone farther than this?”

  “Saul woke up and was sick. We couldn’t move him,” Joyner said. “I didn’t want to leave you anyway, and you wouldn’t either and you know it.”

  The old man stood there shivering, staring at Marson.

  “We heard the shot,” Joyner said. “I’ve never been so fuck’n spooked. I kept thinking what if it was you that got it.”

  “No.”

  “So you got him?”

  Marson looked at the old man. “It wasn’t a Jerry.”

  Joyner said, “What?”

  “It was an Italian.”

  The old man said, “Italiano?”

  “Yeah. Italiano.” Marson turned his carbine on the old man, who held his hands toward him.

  “Un certo figlio d’una puttana fascista. Some on a bitch, Fascist.”

  “Somebody from your village?” Marson said.

  “Collaborazionista fascista bastardo. Bastard.”

  “Yeah,” Marson said. “Bastard.”

  Ridiculously, a memory came to him then of being in a high school class, at St. Anthony High School in Washington, D.C., in 1933, Sister Theresa’s class in Shakespeare, and the play was King Lear. Students were asked to choose a passage to read aloud, and Marson had chosen the speech of Edmund’s that ends with the phrase “stand up for bastards.” Marson had spoken the phrase with such satisfaction and such gusto that the gentle nun had taken him aside after the class to explain the problem of enjoying life’s inconsistencies too much. She had used the word. He had not understood, although he knew perfectly well that she did not like the way he had said the speech.

  He lowered the carbine and nodded at the old man. “‘Stand up for bastards,’” he said. He felt something of himself coming back, and it frightened him, as if his mind would not be able to support it. He did not want to think of home now, or of love, or of family, hearth, hope, or a sleep that presumed that what you left for the province of dreams would be there when you came back. He helped Joyner get Asch up onto his shoulders, and the three of them headed down again, going faster now. The way was so steep that several times they had to get down and edge along, pulling Asch with them. Marson offered to take his own turn carrying him. But Joyner refused. Asch did not utter a sound, and his breathing had grown very shallow. The clouds over the moon thickened, and the rain started again, pellets at first, tiny pieces of hail, turning to water. “Christ, no,” Joyner said. “Christ Almighty no. Fuck’n rain.”

  The snow surface, already crusted over, became slick. They could still break through it, but it was so hard now that at times they slipped on it, and the breaking through would come from falling.

  They came to the last steep part of the climb, the rock ledge where they had slept a little on the way up. They settled Asch in the lee of it and got down themselves, side by side—Joyner, Marson, and the old man. Here they were again, huddled out of the rain.

  “An Italian,” Marson said. “I can’t figure it.”

  “They were on the other side,” Joyner said. “Remember?”

  “I’m sick.”

  Joyner said nothing.

  Asch stirred and moaned. He opened his eyes and stared out. For an instant, Marson thought he might be dead. “Where are we?”

  “Almost there,” Marson said.

  “I’m dead. I can feel the blood going out of me.”

  “You’re imagining it.”

  “No.”

  “You are. It’s your imagination.”

  “I have no imagination anymore,” Asch said. “I’m all facts. That’s me, Robert. Ask me anything.” He sobbed. “Ask me if I’m gonna die.”

  “You’ll make it. We’re almost there. Save your strength. You will make it.”

  “Did you go to the serials?” Asch said. “Back home? The movie houses?”

  Marson thought the other might be raving again. “Yes,” he said.

  “Saturday matinee,” Asch said. “Remember?” He coughed—it seemed harmless, small, not connected to his wounds. He cleared his throat. “All day for a nickel.”

  “Yep.”

  “I always hated having to wait to see how it would turn out.”

  “Last-minute rescues,” Joyner said.

  “Right.” Asch sobbed. “Goddamn it. I should’ve been in synagogue.”

  “Hey,” Joyner said. “Marson got the son of a bitch that shot you, Saul.”
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  “Well, then the son of a bitch and I will both be dead. B’rikh hu. You know what that means? That means ‘Blessed is he.’”

  “You’ll be dead someday, like all of us,” Joyner told him. “But first you’re gonna be out of the fuck’n war.”

  “I wish I was Catholic sometimes.”

  “I wish I was Jewish sometimes,” Marson said. He felt wrong, as if he had not taken the other man seriously enough.

  “I could make my confession and be happy.” So it was one of Asch’s jokes.

  “Don’t know where we’ll get our hands on a priest,” Marson said.

  “Can’t any Catholic hear it?”

  “Only baptism can be done by any Catholic.”

  “Okay, can I be baptized?”

  “Do you really want to be?”

  “Might as well cover all the bases.” Asch smiled. “I never believed it much. We learned the prayers. Grew up with it.”

  “Hey,” Joyner said. “Keep still and we’ll get you down this fuck’n mountain and I’ll baptize you myself.”

  “I’m a sinner.”

  “We all are,” said Joyner.

  “You carried me, Benny.” Asch was weeping again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Benny.”

  “I’m sorry, too. You’re a heavy stinking bastard.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re gonna remember saying all this when you’re healed up and you’re gonna be embarrassed, buddy.”

  “I wish I could’ve savored things more.”

  “Well, save your breath.”

  After a moment, Asch choked up something and spit. He said, “Is that blood?”

  They did not answer him at first.

  “Fellas?”

  “It’s too dark to see, okay?” Joyner said.

  “Is it raining again?”

  “Like the end of the fucking world,” Marson told him.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  FINALLY, THEY STARTED DOWN AGAIN, churning up the crusted snow, once more being thrashed by the rain, which was needle thin, like tiny blades of ice. Joyner, carrying Asch, fell and slid with him in the breaking-up icy melting of the snow, and Marson had to help them both move from the base of the tree that had stopped their descent. The old man was making his way down ahead of them, carrying Asch’s pack.

  “Saul?” Joyner said, lifting him again. “Can you see his face?” he asked Marson, who could not. “You pissed on me, Asch. Hey, Asch.”

  “We’re almost down,” Marson said.

  They came at last out onto the road, where they found that a tank battalion had come up. Joyner began to try to run.

  “He’s not breathing,” he said. “Goddamn it. I think he stopped breathing.” They crossed the road. Joyner set Asch down on the bed of one of the two-and-a-half-ton trucks, and a corpsman with wide, heavy wrists and sloping shoulders walked over and took Asch’s pulse. He blew into the mouth and pressed the chest, and then repeated this. He hit Asch’s chest three times and put the side of his head down on the breastbone. At last he straightened. “Gone,” he said. He reached into the wet shirt and ripped the dog tags off, put one into Asch’s mouth, and punched the chin, so that it caught between the teeth. Joyner flew at him. “You fucking stupid son of a bitch!” he said, flailing. It took two of the others to subdue him. Joyner sat weeping on the ground with his arms draped over his upraised knees, the rain splattering off his helmet and his shoulders. The others stood around watching. Marson had sunk to the ground at the wheel of a jeep that had come up. He watched two soldiers carry Asch’s body away. He could not find it in himself to feel anything. It was all death. Death, death. The rain kept coming down and the others walked away from Joyner, who could not stop. Joyner’s voice went off into the predawn and the rain, the rushing of the river a few yards away through the trees.

  The patrol had gone on. Skirmishers had come through the trees on the other side of the river. Glick was dead. McCaig and Lockhart were casualties, already invalided out of the war.

  Overnight.

  A captain, tall and dark blue eyed, with wire-framed eyeglasses, walked over and looked at them. “Fuck,” he said. “This whole thing’s fucked. What a royal fuckup.”

  Angelo stood near Corporal Marson, looking guilty, almost skulking, hands tucked into the front of his cloak. He was someone awaiting release. It was evident how little any of this meant to him. Marson resented him for it. He looked for the cart and the horse, the old man’s earthly goods. It was like searching for some sign of sane, livable existence.

  Joyner kept shaking his head and weeping, and when the captain stood over him he looked up, his face running with the rain and his tears. “Murderers,” he said.

  The captain said, “Yeah. Outstanding.”

  “Murderers,” Joyner said.

  The captain turned to a couple of the others. “Get him out of here, will you?”

  They took Joyner by the arms, lifting him. Marson didn’t know any of them. It was as if he had left one war and come back into another.

  “I’m reporting it all,” Joyner said.

  The others half carried, half dragged him away. The captain walked over to Corporal Marson, who stood to face him. “You wanna tell me about this?”

  “He’s exhausted, sir,” Marson said. “He carried Private Asch most of the way down this mountain.”

  “You get a view of what’s down the road north?”

  “An orderly retreat,” Marson said emptily. “A big force, moving north.”

  “Tell me the rest of it.”

  He heard himself telling about the climb, the exhaustion, the dead soldier, the sniper who was not a German skirmisher but an Italian straggler. While he told it all, Angelo stood waiting to be let go. He kept murmuring something, looking at the other soldiers, blinking in the rain.

  The captain glanced at him. “Search the old man,” he said to two others.

  They took Angelo aside and went through his cloak. They found the little bottle of schnapps, a few coins—and a drawn map of this part of the country. The map showed positions of American units in the area. “He’s a spy,” the captain said. “Take him into the woods by the river and shoot him.”

  “What?” Marson said. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you questioning me?”

  “Sir—you can’t mean it.”

  “Two soldiers in this outfit were shot by an SS officer and his whore. Four others got it last night. From Italians—acting like people happy to be liberated. You lost somebody from the same actions. Some of them are still in this, and this one’s carrying around scouting information on us. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “He had nothing to do with this, sir.”

  “That’s an order, Corporal. These people know the penalty for spying.”

  “But he helped us get where we needed to, sir. He kept his word.”

  “Yeah, and if they overrun us today, he’ll go back to helping them scout us. This patrol got the shit shot out of it this morning, Corporal. They got it from a couple of peasants who looked just like him. Take care of it.”

  “But he isn’t with them, sir. He’s not with them.” As Marson spoke the words he was not certain that they were true. He was not certain of anything.

  “Look. You gonna do it, or will I?”

  Angelo evidently realized what they were talking about. He began a low muttering and a kind of nervous dance, looking into the raining sky. “Ave Maria,” he said, loud, “piena di grazia, il Signore è con te.” His voice grew still louder as the captain turned to him, and Marson realized, through the second strand of pleading words, that he was saying the Hail Mary in his native language: “Tu sei benedetta fra le donne e benedetto…”

  “Sir,” Marson said. “Don’t do this.”

  The captain unholstered his pistol.

  “Wait, sir,” Marson said. “He’s my prisoner.”

  The captain stopped and looked at him. Others were watching as well. Th
e old man looked around himself, at the soldiers standing there staring at him, and he said his prayer louder, dancing in pure terror. “Ave Maria, piena di grazia…”

  Marson said again, “He’s my prisoner, sir.”

  In the next moment, the old man’s bladder emptied out—the urine ran down his legs and steamed at his feet. Marson looked at the rope-soled shoes.

  “Take him over into the trees and do it,” the captain said. “Now.”

  Corporal Marson leveled his carbine at Angelo and gestured for him to move off. The old man sank to his knees, crying, folding his hands, as if Marson were an icon to which he was praying.

  “Get up,” Marson said, aware of the others watching him.

  The old man slowly got to his feet, still with hands clasped, looking at Marson with a mixture of disbelief and fright. “Amico,” he pleaded. “Friend.”

  Marson gestured for him to walk ahead, and he began to move off in a mincing stride, weeping and saying the prayer. Corporal Marson knew the prayer well enough to repeat it with him, except that he could not recall the English. It was as if the words had never been in any other language.

  They went into the trees on the river side of the road, and on down a path to the edge of the water. Marson kept gesturing for him to continue along the path, which wound away from the road. Dawn was breaking behind the heavy clouds, the sky turning to light, gray and cold, with black tatters drifting in it, and the freezing rain, still coming down, as if it had never stopped. Marson looked over his shoulder to see that he was out of sight of the road, and of the others. “Okay, hold it,” he said to the old man. “Wait.” Angelo stopped and turned, and now seemed to have gathered himself. There was something different about his eyes. Suddenly he said, “Pig,” his mouth with its bad teeth open, his face fixed in a strange, gaping scowl.

  Marson stared. The black eyes showed nothing. But then for an instant it was as if the old face had tightened with hatred.

  “Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte. Amen.”