Beckoning War Page 10
Another volley of shells bears down. A chunk of the roof collapses and lands just short of the altar with a weighted, crumbly crash, and Jim hits the stone floor again as a wash of dust rolls over all. The stones on which he lies turn in his gaze as he picks himself back up to his knees, the room turning in a daze as the crash of the explosion slowly dissipates. He turns around to see a pile of stones on the broken altar and a torrent of rain pouring down through the gaping hole in the ceiling.
“I think we should abandon this church before it falls on us, sir,” says Doyle, crouched against a corner nearby. “I think we should’ve abandoned this fucking church yesterday.”
“Good idea,” says Jim, his heart racing, “good idea.” He faces the rest of the men. “Form up and abandon this position! Onward and on the double! Move into the trenches on the reverse side and dig in! Decamp and let’s move out!” The men set about gathering their kit, slinging packs and weapons, radio and telephone equipment, ammunition and ration boxes, and they head out as more artillery bears down, and Jim runs out into the lanes and shouts, “Able Company! Abandon your positions and fall back! Abandon your positions! Fall back!” He sees another shell hit the church and then another, and much of the rest of the pitted and broken roof caves in, leaving only a blasted, gutted shell of a building. They wend their way squad by squad through the mucky lanes to the reverse slope of the hill, and they leap into the trenches many would hold during the day, bailing them out, digging deeper, heaving clots of sodden muck with their spades. Jim oversees at a crouch, his fevered breath misting with each panicked exhalation in the driving rain, and he helps several soldiers with their digging and bailing, using his helmet to ladle muddy water from sodden slit trenches. He opts to use the crumbled ruin of a farmhouse at the very edge of the town as a headquarters, and he orders Witchewski, Cooley, Lafontaine and Thibeault to set up shop in there. He invites soldiers to come rest and dry themselves out in shifts, as the rain pours in sheets and the night is rent by the artillery that peals like thunder, and Jim lies on his thin mat in the corner while soldiers sit and huddle with their knees against the wall in the clutter of the broken house, waiting, waiting, waiting through the hours for relief. Waiting, Jim thinks, and helps himself to a pull of whiskey from his flask to steady his nerves for another day of holding the line. Sooner or later we have to wade in and fight the undertow.
12
Able Company awaits relief. Rain patters on the roof of the house, drips through holes, lands in cold drops on the floor and on the soldiers seeking shelter from the guns. Two minutes after the supposed relief time, after a brief but intense German bombardment, they hear approaching footsteps, footsteps of a large body of men making their way to their new positions. A changing of the guard. A figure appears in shadow at the door, and is questioned by the sentry, Private Cook. After a quick exchange of muffled words, an officer appears, wearing his beret instead of a helmet, very young, narrow-faced, freshly shaved, with a thin black Clark Gable style officer’s moustache that suggests an effort to impersonate a young Field Marshal Montgomery, like so many Canadian officers. Jim and the officer salute one another.
“Captain James McFarlane, Able Company, 1st Irish.”
“Acting Captain Edward Simmonds, Charlie Company, West Novas.”
“Welcome to my position. It’s yours. We’ve taken a helluva beating these last few days, but this house should stand you through the worst of it. The platoons are dug in pretty well here but we’ve taken some casualties. We had to abandon most of the ruins up top as we took too much of a beating. I leave to you the scenic splendour of San Matteo, illuminated by the fireworks of our friends the Germans.” There is some laughter from the men at this. “You may want to dig even deeper—they’ve really been pulverizing this place. I believe it’s been all de-mined, but watch your steps nonetheless.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“No problem. It’s free of charge. Take care here, okay?”
“Okay, you too.” They briefly meet eyes. Jim averts his after a moment.
Jim addresses the men in the house: “Gentlemen, in official military parlance: Let’s get the hell out of here. Avanti!”
Under a flickering sky they wend their way out of the house and the slit trenches, and they form up in the rain with the other companies moving out of their adjacent positions. During the transfer, a shell lands on Baker, causing three casualties. Jim reverses the journey he took days ago with his compatriots, this time on foot, as his jeep has been taken back to the rear. The soldiers march single file in the night on a dirt track furrowed by the cartwheels of farmers, their feet squelching in the mud, rain beating on their helmets and beading on and running down their gas capes, their breaths smoking in the rain. They march to the piping of Sergeant Mullen, the battalion pipe major, as he skirls the strains of “Garry Owen” and “When Johnny Comes Marching” and “Tipperary”; this keeps them in step, miserable and tired though they are, as they pace their way through the muddy puddles as the gullies to the sides of them fill and flow with gurgling runoff.
Through a mucky depression in the road he marches. Squelch, squelch, squelch. The mud sucks at his boot with each lifting step in an attempt to claim him. In the end, the earth always gets its man. A clutch of German shells lands nearby in a tree stand, too far away to cause alarm, lighting up the night with streaking umbrellas of sparks. They march, tromp, tromp, tromp, until they make it to the rest village over the River Conca, the hilly outskirts of which are lined with stakes embroidered with the vines of grapes, and that Jim can see in the darkness has not been scarred by battle or bombardment. When they crossed the river before, it was a cracked shingle bed, scored and furrowed with canyons in the parched summer drought; now it is a torrent, filling with rain, heralding the arrival of autumn underneath their tramping footsteps on the Bailey bridge with the erosive certainty of water and the seasons. Over a humped stone bridge beneath which a rain-glutted creek gurgles, and under a gnarled reach of oak branches they make their way. Into the cobbled and lockstone winding streets they march, passing on either side of them rows of pastel townhouses with shuttered windows that reveal their colours in brief flashes of sheet lightning that crackle through the clouds—light Easter egg blue, earthy mustard yellow, pink, wedding cake off-white, light cinder grey. They pass ornate window enclosures and colonnaded windows fringed with flowerboxes and planted herbs and tomatoes. Under an arch they march into an expansive tiled piazza ringed by shopfronts enclosed in an arched yellow portico, and onto a side street, alongside rows of tree-lined cinderblock and stone houses with sloping terra cotta tiled roofs. Several army trucks grunt and lumber by, the canvas roofs over their cabs dating them as relics of the desert campaign two years ago, given to Canadian units by the British when their own transport was sunk by the German air raid in the Mediterranean back before Christmas. Rain-drenched canvas canopies stretch over the metal rib frames, giving the trucks the appearance of gaunt and starving animals. A woman waves from a dark window through open red wooden shutters. Jim waves back. Maybe a washerwoman in the employ of the Eighth Army. He is directed with his company down a street to a row of four large houses that have been assigned to his company, and along with the others, is given changes of clothes by the rear echelons. He goes through the motions mechanically, bone-tired, accepting his change of clothes and told to report to mess at 0900 sharp the following morning. His men dispatched en masse to their houses, he joins the other officers of the battalion as they make their way to their own adjoining billets. Some of them are in a small hotel owned and operated by Giovanni and Estella Ceci, who have gleefully attached themselves to the Eighth Army as helpers, and who smilingly await their guests at the front door framed by the red shutters of the hotel windows. Captain Alward of Charlie Company whistles with approval at the sight of the small hotel, and exclaims, “I was betting on a tent. This will more than do!” Mr. and Mrs. Ceci are in their fifties; he is balding and has a
weathered face and black moustache, and she is smiling and plump. They usher in Doyle, Therrien and a Lieutenant Volpe before Jim.
“Come in, come in, you must be cold,” Estella entreats in a thick Italian accent, waving him in beyond the whitewashed façade of the hotel with her fleshy arms, “We have beds a-ready for you, yes we do, just come with me.” She is the very embodiment of effusive hospitality, much as the priest at the church was the opposite. Giovanni smiles and nods at him as he is led in by Estella, his hand enveloped by her meaty matronly paw. Jim is pleasantly overwhelmed by the fragrance of garlic and herbs as he enters their cluttered but tasteful hotel by way of the front room, pictures hanging from the wall, a table and sofa and chairs beside a fireplace full of old ashes. Beyond is a dining room and kitchen, and in front of him is a staircase leading up to the hotel’s handful of rooms. There is a fumy, dusty air of mothballs and must. In the lobby stands Major Riordan, cobeen on head, cup of coffee in hand. He is a tall, weak-chinned man with a wide moustache and spectacles, with the air of an accountant—which, in fact, he was until the war.
“Pretty good find, eh, McFarlane?” he asks, proud. “We were among the first guys in here scouting. I saw it and right away chose it for us. Some of the Johnnies-come-lately will be stuck in sheds and pup tents and old Jerry trenches. This is Irish Avenue!”
“Good work, Major,” agrees Jim, complimenting Riordan on his acquisitions. “Good work indeed. You did it again. Certainly beats the hell out of a pile of rubble or a musty tent.” Mrs. Ceci ushers Captains Alward and Van Der Hecke into their rooms. She points to his room, and settles the other officers into their rooms as well; Jim opens the door and finds himself in a small but comfortable room with a double bed, a desk, a dresser, and a sink and washbasin. At the end of a hall is a shared washroom with a chain-flushed squat toilet embedded in the floor. He lights a couple candles that have been provided in honour of the general blackout. Pulling off his boots, he is acutely aware that his feet reek, his socks sopping wet.
The night thuds with distant shellfire, and a sharper crack of nearby thunder. He pulls off his khaki bush shirt and throws it to the floor. It settles with a faint whoomping sound, billowing out air through its sleeves and folds like a collapsing tent, and he sits on the bed, which has been stripped of its bedding by the Germans and covered with a crisp white army sheet and grey woollen army blanket, more than likely provided by the quartermasters, and lies down on the mattress, his sopping stockinged feet still on the floor, socks sagging and loose at the toes, pulling downward painfully on his leg hairs as they slouch and pile at his ankles. He removes them and savours the feeling of his feet airing out, the relief of itchiness. He leans over and reaches into the breast pocket of his khaki bush shirt lying rumpled in a grimy heap, and pulls out his silver cigarette case. He lights a cigarette and lies back on the mattress again, the springs groaning underneath, feet still planted on the floor, and inhales, eyes pointed up at the stucco ceiling. One good thing deserves another, he muses, one good thing deserves another and I deserve a drink, he thinks, yes I do, I deserve a drink, and he sits up again and reaches into his webbing for his flask, and he gulps down a slug of whiskey and it warms him, his temples hum and thrum, and a warm wave of relaxation washes over him coupled with the nervous solace of the cigarette.
From through the floorboards and echoing from the halls is the controlled, plaintive howl of a harmonica to the longing strains of “Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home”:
When you left, you broke my heart
That would never make us part
Every hour in the day, you will hear me say
“Baby, won’t you please come home?”
He feels a sudden longing for Marianne, a sudden regret for this decision to be where he is, almost two years away from his wife, in a situation of danger as self-imposed as it is imposed upon the world. He ashes into an empty wine bottle standing beside his bed. Why the hell am I here? Because I wanted to be. I wanted to be here, so I came here. I came here to prove something to myself. How many others are like me? Everyone in this expeditionary force is a volunteer. Just like you told Cooley in the jeep. There are thousands of us, signed up for King and Country. Or pride. Or a thirst for adventure. Or to run away from something. To run away from something … What the hell did you run away from? Complacency? A good job? A beautiful and intelligent wife? He turns his head to a mirror on the empty dresser on the far side of the room, and he can see himself indented into the mattress, lazily smoking, looking back at himself. A nagging sense of failure? Inability to cut it in the regular world? What the hell, Jim, you can’t even cut it here. You’re not all that tough. Think of that letter you wrote to your dad and tossed out in the church. He rummages into his trouser pockets and pulls a picture from his brown leather wallet stuffed with military-issue lire banknotes, the wallet a gift from Marianne two years ago. From this sepia print, she smiles at him, her natural vivacity channelled through her luscious-lipped grin, her wavy black hair an exciting contrast to her lilywhite face, her lashes turned up coquettishly, her finely curved features given extra definition in soft black and white tempered with brown. I miss you so much and I long to return to you.
From the same pocket he pulls a worn, folded note. He slowly unfolds it and looks at it wistfully. His last letter from Marianne, received one month ago. One month. Surely, she’s written since then. Anything can happen. Goddamn army postal service is a farce. Maybe the letter’s been shot down or sunk en route. It’s happened before. Aww, whatever.
He reads and drinks in solace from the words.
Dear Jim,
I hope this finds you well. I do miss you. Your last letter sounded so passionate, so intense. I hope you’re holding up over there. I read the newspapers, I listen to the radio. Italy’s really blown up again, hasn’t it? But now with the invasion in France, that’s about all you find in the news right now. Normandy’s the ‘big show’ now. You guys in what you call the ‘Spaghetti League’ don’t get enough credit anymore, but you’re not totally forgotten.
Jim is physically warmed by the embroidery of written words on the note. He continues reading:
Mrs. Wright came by the other day to give me home-baked cookies and tea—how very sweet of her, she knows how lonely it can get. She’s taken on a sort of surrogate mother role to me. Her sons are working in lumber camps up the Gatineau River and her husband has signed up for reserve duty to complement his job at the lumberyard. Over here it’s all work, and when people aren’t working, it’s talk about which team’s on top in hockey. The usual. Well, I could do without the rationing around here, we all complain about it, but don’t worry, I don’t get too carried away with it, because I think of you sweating it out in the battlefields, and I know you have more to complain about than we do when we’re stuck eating thin pork chops and you have to duck bullets in the mud.
Well, I’ll leave you now. Take care over there, and take care of your charge.
Love you and hold on tight—
Marianne
He looks a moment at the letter he has just read, tracing the ink river of thought and emotion with his eyes, and says to himself, what another world I’m in. What another man I am now. Kill, kill, kill my way back home. Just as most of them are just trying to kill their way back home. Locked into mutual murder, just to go home to escape it. Fight your way to peace. Kill your way back to life. Run madly for your sanity.
There is a knock at the door. “Come, come have drink of wine with us before bed, come down to dining room, yes?” It is the voice of Estella Ceci, brimming with a robust hospitality and an eagerness to share what few resources she has.
“Okay, just give me a moment,” Jim responds in a rusty and exhausted voice. “Just allow me to ... ” The world of his perceptions distorts like the reflections in a water drop, images and sounds stretching and blending together in liquid impressions, I’m so tired just let me sleep through Gemmano row
by row row across the Styx fromeverandeveramen—
He opens his eyes and reemerges from the dreamy netherworld of gibberish into which he has plunged. “I’ll be right there,” he slurs. Words fit his mouth like mismatched puzzle pieces, tongue and teeth unable to conform to the contours of sound and syllable, his tongue thick and tired and dry and dumb and his brain unable to conjure up any conversation beyond vapid banalities slowed by want of sleep. “I’ll be …”
13
“You are defined by your decisions. And your decisions define you.” Wise words spoken by his father years ago and miles away in Sudbury, where he worked as a family doctor and as an anaesthetist at St. Joseph’s Hospital. These words were uttered when Jim was only seven and had been caught stealing penny candies from the corner grocery. Mr. Logothetis, the Greek owner, grabbed him by the ear, shouted at him and forced him to call his father at home before sending him on his way.
“Do you know what that means, son?” His father’s fine, expressive Scots-Irish features, mirrored in softer definition in his own boy’s face, loomed down on him in studied disapproval and disappointment. “Do you know what this means?” Jim averted his eyes as they filled with water, and his skin reddened in a searing of shame. His queasy humiliation was electrified by the fear of a spanking, the usual punishment for any wrong done, especially when his father was tired after a long week of work.
“Uh huh.” Fumbling and fidgeting, he looked reluctantly back up at his dad.
“Look at me, Jim. Look up at me. Don’t hide your eyes from me. Real men look up and face the consequences.” Real men, Jim thought, real men. Will I ever be as big as Dad? Will I ever be a real man? Johnny Bailey says I’m weak and will never grow up to be strong like him or his dad. Jim felt small and weak right now, caught stealing from a store, stealing on a dare from the same Johnny Bailey. Johnny Bailey, the biggest boy around. He can play hockey and score on anyone, even the older kids. His dad owns a mine. His uncle plays on the refinery baseball team. Mom calls Johnny a reprobate. He says Mom talks funny because she’s from Ireland. She says “Em” instead of “Um.” He thinks that’s funny. Listen to Dad.