Part 12

Sunlight fell on the huge ruined castle as they fished below it, from blocks of masonry, thick, limestone slabs, some of them mossy and intricately carved. Orville's stone--the one he was casting from--bore a hooded falcon with Latin letters chiselled under its claws. They cast into a pool overhung by a three-story chunk of masonry, a dark green pool, free of snags or leaves, pool and castle merging. She dropped a fly inside a water window: with each flick of the fly the window disappeared, to reappear almost immediately. They didn't talk as they fished. A dove talked. A raven settled in a pine, intrigued by the fishermen. Downstream cattle waded, sucking softly, up to their knees in the water.

"Good boy," Jean exclaimed, as he got a strike. "Bring him in easy ... easy does it."

Releasing some line, he played his trout: the reel's spinning thrilled him: the line sliced across the water, forming a ragged oval: he was in New York again.

Jeannette longed to sign out, her job forsaken: she longed to keep him forever.

"Not very big," he said, landing his catch. "A pound or so, I guess." But he was very pleased.

"He's great ... he's great!"

She loved his face.

Plopping his catch into his creel, he said:

"There used to be some big ones in here ... years ago Prince Radziwill stocked the Nonette. I've heard some tall stories."

"I've heard that the Radziwills still take care of Ermenonville," she said, casting again. "I've never met any of the family ... they help the hospital financially."

"They may convert their country house into a hospital," he said.

"I've heard that too."

While they fished the sun ducked behind the castle. Clouds. The kind that seem to be sheared off a sheep appeared along the horizon, above the trees; they seemed headed for the Nonette and E.

As Jean hopped from one block of masonry to another, she slipped into the stream, soaking herself to the knees: for a while she kidded about it but as the wind increased she complained of the cold.

"I've got to quit," she said, but at that moment, as she moved toward the embankment for shelter from the wind, she got a strike. Too cold and uncomfortable to play her fish she landed the trout quickly, saying:

"Okay ... okay ... I have to quit ... my sweater's not enough to keep me warm ... let's go to the hospital..."

"Well we've each landed one. That's pretty darn good," he said.

Her rod against a tree, she fussed with her sweater collar and trousers, appreciating Orville's graceful cast--the dimple of his fly as it settled.

When will he have another chance?

"Stay on, Orville ... meet at the hospital ... go on ... you'll land another one."

His thoughts, as he played his line, cameraed across time, clicked, stopped: there he was with Lena in her boat on the Nonette: she was trolling, the wind warm, cattails along the banks ...

"I'm coming, Jean ... Just a second."

As he wound the line, speeding his reel, he watched swallows dip, fly close to the water, rise, ride the wind, turn.

"Let's have our lunch at the hospital," she suggested, as they walked together. She carried Orville's creel and he carried the lunch basket and poles. The sky's greyness worked lower into surrounding trees and fields. Jean shivered as they followed a willow path: she was glad to hump along briskly.

"Her funeral will be tomorrow," he said.

"Yes, I know," she said.

"Will you be able to come?"

"I think so."

"You and I have seen a lot of death."

"Yes, we have."

"Life's not supposed to be like that."

They detoured to the hospital kitchen. Opening a half-door, placing their basket on a plank table, Jean told the cook what a mess she was in.

"Can we eat here?"

"Change your clothes, then have your picnic here, where it's warm. I'll give you all the hot soup you can eat. You'll be all right in no time, Mlle. Jean."

He was an obese fellow of seventy or so, his arms swirled with golden hairs, his moustache white like his crop of hair. He thought Jeannette very amusing, her accent reminding him of the French he had heard as a lad in Canada.

While Jean changed, Orville enjoyed soup at the deal table, thinking of Uncle Victor, Lena, the war: it was possible that Victor would be unable to attend the burial. If he came, what would they say to each other? Casual stuff about the war? A string of dull comments about the U.S.? Something banal about Lena? He was concerned about Aunt Therese ...

That sadness of hers: those hollow eyes!

Through the half-door, Orville could watch the street: villagers in raincoats, in thick sweaters, some under umbrellas, people and pigeons, rain, wind, Nazis. Suddenly, nurses flooded the kitchen, entering through an inside door, some with trays of dishes. Annoying the cook, they swooped around his stove. Suddenly, they were gone, carrying their trays and chatter into an adjoining room.

Jeannette and Orville ate at the table, the talkative chef hovering about, yarning about old times in E. They ate hungrily and then dropped into a tobacco shop for cigarettes, and Orville bought a copy of _Le Senlis_.

The proprietor was opinionated about the drab future of France: he ranted about the Occupation, about local corruption, a big man with a big mouth. Orville lit a cigarette and slammed the door on him--the fellow still griping. Jean rolled the newspaper and tucked it under her arm. Orville held the umbrella. Wind and rain took over as they walked toward the hospital.

... The sneers of life: so you had a cousin but didn't dare sleep with her because of your puritanism ... emergency leave ... emergency thoughts ... you ... you went fishing and gave your catch to the cook ... you have a girl named Jean ... you bought a newspaper ...

Was that Victor's car up ahead?

Is that our military hero, our 1918 professional?

Claude is shutting the car doors.

Well, here we are at the hospital, shall we go in out of the rain?

It was almost fishing in the rain, when fish really bite. A fishing funeral: is that on tomorrow's agenda? Yes, tomorrow she is to be buried ... Yes, a cup of coffee, Claude ... Yes, miserable weather. Yes, Jean's returned: she's on duty.

Orville and Victor sat in the living room: Orville's fishing rods were leaning against a wall.

"So, you went fishing in the rain?"

"No, Uncle Victor ... it wasn't raining..."

"Any luck? ... I used to have good luck."

"I caught one."

"Ah!"

Flipping open a cigar box, Victor offered cigars.

During seven years the man had become another man: his silky white hair was brushed over a bald spot; his moustache had become a gentle weed; there was no color in his cheeks; his chin was porcelain white: what had happened to his eyes? And his voice? Words came painfully.

A long rectangular coffee table stood between them: on it lay several current magazines and paperbacks. Colonel Ronde called Bichain and asked for coffee and a fire in one of the fireplaces.

"Turn on some lamps, Claude."

"It's been years, many years, since we've talked ... did we talk very much when you were here ... ah, these wars!" His eyelids lifted and the pupils bored into Orville. "You resemble your dad ... a man I always liked ... it seems only yesterday he was here." He tugged at a lapel of his blue serge and then screwed a finger in his ear.

"Bob believed that there never would be another war, he felt that nations couldn't afford one ... he was thinking of money, the waste of money ... he was clever with money ... he would not have been able to understand the billions poured into this crusade." Ronde cracked the band of his cigar, letting it drop onto the rug.

He described his Marseilles-Paris freight services: he was the line's supervisor (five years): he sketched in his military duties, carried out on the side:

"You know I was flown here in a biplane ... to a deserted farm. Active ... ah, active duty, you see."

The problems of the protracted German occupation worried him: problems that involved the desperate underground. He said that Lena had been with the Maquis ...

All bravery and foolhardiness ...

"I've tried to keep away from the Maquis for the sake of my family and business. I'm afraid of reprisals in Marseille and here in little Ermenonville, after the war. Lena was often entrusted with important documents ... I suspect that the Maquis were using her ... I think you get what I infer."

"She had never opened up with me," Orville said.

"I reject her kind of game. It always gets sticky. Your friends become suspect; your peace of mind is shattered ... it's, umm, ah, bad." He smoked thoughtfully. "War is preferable to that kind of deceit. I don't want to blackmail my brain..."

For Orville the relationship was becoming meaningful; he wanted to continue talking, and as they talked he began to confide:

" ... You understand how our draft works ... you see, I was drafted ... I tried to make myself believe in personal sacrifice ... sure, sure, we would accomplish great things--world progress. I hardly knew what Nazism was. Okay. Invasion. Rescue Europe. To hell with Rommel. Ike and de Gaulle! I thought of you and Lena and Aunt Therese ... my Ermenonville. I knew that France was having it rough ...

"At Cornell I got the architecture bug ... sure, a job ... a life doing churches, houses, barns, silos. That was my idea of freedom. If you ask me what freedom is I don't know anymore. Right now ... now I'm shackled ... this killing business has me!"

Orville attempted to analyze his uncle's face: was he betraying himself, hurting Ronde?

Bombers roared over the house, but when it was quiet he continued:

"I have visited Dad's grave. I've been re-thinking ... why is he dead and why am I living?"

The colonel shook his head, and puffed his cigar.

"You've something to live for," he said. "You have your Jean. It's a matter of weeks, Orville, because Nazi Germany is collapsing ... only a matter of weeks. You must manage to stay alive. Look, you are fighting criminals, not soldiers. There's a prison named Auschwitz where the Nazis are murdering thousands of Jews, innocents, women, kids. German factories employ slave labor..."

The clock on the mantel chimed three: Claude was laying a fire in a fireplace and glanced at the clock and then at the men: he had placed liqueurs on the table but they were unaware.

Momentarily, Ronde thought of Lena and Orville playing together as kids: they had meant much to each other: their relationship had pleased almost everyone who knew them: when he radio-phoned General Meade to grant a leave to Orville it was this relationship Ronde was remembering. Meade had met both Lena and Orville when a guest at Ermenonville, in '38.

"Jeannette wants to marry," Orville went on. "I'm not sure how, on faith ... my Jean. Can I tell you that there are no real compensations? It's illusion, self-delusion, or nothing!"

Aunt Therese came in and embraced them: pale, very sad, she took a rocker beside her husband, a shawl about her shoulders.

"I'm glad you've found each other," she said with childish abruptness. It was comforting to her to have the men together, it eased her loss for the moment; it brought to mind a summer six years ago when there had been a family reunion for her birthday, people from Marseilles, Paris, St. Cloud, Senlis. She saw in Victor's face that reunion: why, they were growing old in Ermenonville!

"It wasn't so long ago that I was religious, I was a girl who secreted her crucifix under her pillow, who loved her rosary. It wasn't fear or superstition. I thought of Christ as my friend: I counted on him ...

"You men count on guns. God's never been real to you; we all know that those who go to war are disregarding thou shall not. I had Christ as my friend in those days..."

Claude had left the room. They were silent. The logs were crackling.

"Lena turned her back on Christ," she added. "There was no god to help her through bad times. She felt that there is no eternal life. The war was her life."

"Youth ... the hunger of youth," said Victor, as though talking to himself. "Her country, the struggle for world freedom ... wasn't it something like that?"

"Perhaps so ... but I know that each of us is poorer for losing faith ... and losing her ... our Lena." She rocked in her rocker, hands clenched on the arms of the chair.

Next morning they sat together in the village church, skinny blue glass windows on each side of the room, the altar small and primitively carved, its gold leaf badly scaled. An 18th century reliquary of gilt wood--a miniature of gem-like quality--adorned a side table. Its scarf was tattered, many of the metallic threads tarnished and broken, their story the story of the crucifixion.

Orville sat between his aunt and uncle, Jeannette beside Victor: he noticed Annette, Claude, Celeste, Thomassont, neighbors, strangers: was one of them Charles Chabrun, her lover from Paris? Had Claude informed him of Lena's death? As everyone knelt on the kneeling pads Orville looked at Jeannette, considering things she had said indicative of her faith: it seemed to be a nurse's faith, if there was such a faith.

Candles burned on the altar and alongside Lena's coffin; somebody was playing a Bach chorale on the organ: the room was cold: icy cold: chill seeped from the tiled floor and from behind the organ where there seemed to be a smashed window or open door.

How kind to fuss over the dead like this; it meant so much more than death on the battlefield.

As Orville knelt, he started a letter to his mother in the back of his mind, writing it in French, the language she loved most:

Dear Mom:

When I arrived in E I found that Lena was dead of pneumonia. I know you will be saddened by this news. You two got along so well together. It is rough these days, but you already know this. I am glad that you are not in Europe. Your Europe exists no longer.

I know I have not written to you for a long time. I simply can not write. There is nothing new to tell you. Our Corps is engaged in battle after battle; you would not want me to recount that kind of stuff. The war, as I see it, seems far from ending: resistance is bitter and strong. I am told that the war may end shortly. I don't believe it ...

Orville glanced about the church, at the windows, at the ceiling, at the grains in the pew in front of him, syrup-colored grains.

Mom ... our enemy is collective insanity. It is everyone's enemy. I feel it, here in Ermenonville (even in church) ... I feel impelled to revolt against all things. I hate myself for I am to blame for many of the things that have happened to me, tragic things.

In Africa, as we fought against Rommel's tank corps, we had hopes of one kind and another. Those hopes have vanished one by one ... some of us are at the bottom rung.

If I get home I will not attend church with you, or go with anyone: my brain won't stomach it: if I fail to grasp theological preachment it is due to man's insensate cruelty and nothing I can see ahead cancels those experiences. My Jesus has been a trigger Jesus. My chapter and verse have been pain and explosives.

I am an old guy from Ithaca: "giver of pain."

Orville realized that his aunt was sobbing but he could not put his hand on hers. She must endure alone.

Alone.

Here I am alone, with no brother or neighbor, or friend or society but myself: isn't that the gist of the first part of Rousseau's _Reveries_!

My personal discoveries would startle you because they are un-French, un-American. They are discoveries that must have been made a hundred or five hundred thousand years ago: survival!

Yesterday, Jeannette and I fished in the Nonette, each of us catching one. We fished by the old castle--a cold, cold day. I remember your portfolio of watercolors of the ruin--charming scenes. I never could do as well. Are you still sketching, Mom? There are so many pleasant places around Ithaca.

The funeral service was almost over.

Are you still dating Chris Wilson? He is a nice guy. How's his medical practice doing? Improving? Is he getting rich?

I guess things are about as usual in Ithaca--minus the fellows who are off to war. I suppose you attend plays at Willard Straight. Have you seen some good ones? I hope so. And your French classes--how is teaching these days?

Jean is okay--Aunt and Uncle okay, though very depressed. Lena's death will take a hell of a lot out of them.

Keep well ...

Orville felt his aunt's hand on his own; confused he glanced around.

Her face expressed a kind of final somberness.

The priest's face was professionally blank.

Orville did not want to see Victor's face, or Jeannette's.

In the cemetery he was impressed once more by life's clever deceptions: he had never really known Lena-the-Maquise; he did not know Therese or Victor, he did not know Jeannette: in a nearby plot lay someone else he had never known--Robert St. Denis.

Orville's thoughts reached out to what was taking place.

They were lowering Lena's coffin--ropes going down: a couple of grave men were watching the pair who were doing the job; one of the watchers lit a cigarette as the ropes jerked and the coffin hesitated.

"Walk back with me," Jeannette said.

"Yes," he said.

"Let's go ... now ... take my arm."

"Yes."

They walked arm in arm, the cemetery road straight, narrow, an uncut weed strip down the middle, its double row of pines beaded with rain, needles sagging, a sparrow chattering in a small tree.

She wanted to restore their relationship: wanted to help him: what was his mood?

"Are you warm?" she asked.

"Yes ... no ... I'm cold ... the church was cold ... are you cold?"

"I've got a sweater on underneath my coat. I can't take a chance, and catch a cold."

"We were plenty wacky to try to have a picnic at this season of the year," he admitted.

"They say it snowed in Paris yesterday," she said.

"Really?"

"I'd rather have snow than so much rain."

"Sure."

The empty hearse passed, grinding in low, bobbing and shaking on antique springs, a vintage Mercedes. The driver swung wide for an intersecting road and brushed against branches, scraping the hood and top. A truck, towing a disabled car, crept toward Senlis, tailing fumes.

I'm crazy ... I didn't have to attend her funeral ... death in a fox hole ... death at ten miles an hour ... cremation ... pneumonia ... you have your choice ... step right up, it's death.

Who am I to want to make love? Have a wife! Have more kids to make more killers! More wars! She ought to walk alone, she and her hypodermics and anesthesias and bed pans! We ought to drink an aperitif, shake hands and call it quits!

"Darling," she said, making an effort.

"What?" he asked bluntly, unable to so much as glance at her.

He hated himself because she was normal, able to communicate, eager to help, able to see ahead.

"You're a dreamer," he exclaimed, resentment increasing.

"I suppose I am. Is that bad?"

"Wouldn't it be better if you weren't?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just that."

"But I try to do my job; I work hard. I don't understand you."

"It would be better to let the wounded die. They were damn fools to get themselves wounded in the first place."

"Orville ... Orville!"

She was troubled and frightened: such a voice.

"I put them to death, and you sew them together ... we call that life."

"The funeral upset you."

"Death's better on the battlefield, without a big, mediocre fuss."

Then he remembered Al, who had died in his arms, the gaping hole in his skull. He remembered Chuck and his suicide ... He shuddered in his skull. He remembered Maitland ... his jaw clamped.

"I'll shut up," he said. "I'll be okay soon ... just let me shut up ... just let me be."

The outdoors and the sky and her silent companionship helped but he could not talk, would not talk: impotence--he knew the meaning and the implications. Yanking off a splinter of wood at the hospital gate, he said:

"I'll phone you ... I'll see you."

And he walked away.

Jeannette welcomed the solitude of her small room and the tangled, dying vines over the lace-curtained windows: curtains, a single chair, a night table, and her bed. She gave way to tears, bewildered by Orville, saddened by the funeral, resenting the hospital and its wounded, resenting Dr. Mercier, Dr. Marcuse, Louis ... what a lackluster lot of minor medics: they would never mean anything to her: each day was impersonal: I must get to a movie in Senlis, perhaps a luncheon date: the men craved sex (she did not blame them, so often wanting it herself). She was able to concentrate on duty and remain faithful to Orville and sexual fantasies.

On Ermenonville's main street, war had slung together a shabby eating place, between a candy shop and a milliner's. Walking through the village, Orville opened the door onto charcoal smoke and a row of empty tables spread with checkered cloths. A fellow, wearing an apron, appeared from behind an unpainted wooden screen and asked Orville what he wanted, speaking rudely, obviously ill, his voice strained, the face fat, both obese and pocked: something was hurting his lungs: such coughing!

Orville ordered wine and asked for a pack of cigarettes and sat down--arms elbowed on the red and white squares. As he sipped wine he tried to evolve a tomorrow:

Yeah, Germany was on fire. He was due back. He wanted none of it. He wanted time, time to be himself, for a week or a month, doing something useful: it would be exciting to plan a house, and he scrawled the outlines of a residence on the table cover with the handle of a spoon: a plan: when can I have a chance to plan?

For now, he had had enough of Jeannette: what help was she? Nobody was gifted at helping: the world was not geared to helping: sleep might help: it was possible to drown in sleep, under illusion and disillusion, head pillowed on hate, saying to hell with khaki, away with GI slop, the stink of another man's piss.

When the waiter tried to talk, Orville shook him off.

"Sorry," he said, and gulped his wine and stalked out.

Over there is where I attended school, that one-story building where famed New York architect learned about King Francis, Napoleon, read Victor Hugo and Villon, hated classes: see bronze tablet above the entry: what numbing sensations in that box-shaped building topped by four chimney pots.

Across the street, by those poplar trees, is her hospital: notice the calloused grey paint: some of the doors have scaled: some of the windows are blacked out. Nurses are huddled on the front porch, wrapped in coats, jackets, sweaters, scarves, relating the latest.

Out in the country I could walk for years, bumping myself against the cage of introversion. Trees are bare. Not a person is working in the fields ... maybe the fields have been deserted for years.

The walls of a bygone abbey were waiting for someone or something, a scream, a leaf. Across hedgeless fields, willows were also waiting. No machine guns.

His shoes scuffed gravel; mud took the place of gravel; he walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets. The one friendly thing was his pocket knife, given by his mother, small, agate-covered knife. Somehow, he had been able to keep it.

Something rustled alongside the road, a field mouse in a heap of leaves. Was that its home?

Home?

Shall I return to the Rondes?

No.

No, Jeannette ... no ...

Keep walking.

Thirsty, hungry ... keep walking. If it rains, keep walking. If you get tired, keep walking.

When it was dark he was still walking. Somewhere in the night he heard a man's voice. He could not identify the speaker at first.

"Is it worthwhile?" the voice asked.

"What?"

"The mess you're in."

"No."

"Does she still play Debussy?"

"Who?"

"Your mother."

"Now and then."

"Chopin?"

"Some."

"Why don't you go AWOL?"

"Shall I?"

"What's she doing in Ithaca?"

"Teaching French."

"And you're going back to her?"

"To war."