Flee, fly, fled, Paul Berlin thought, feeling the train’s great pulling power.
It was bare, rugged country. A few goats, a camel stiff along a stone wall, rivers flowing with chunks of ice.
Like Lake Country, Paul Berlin thought. Like the World’s Greatest Lake Country.
He did not want to think about it. High in the mountains, they had marched at last to the battle. Marching endlessly up the red road to the higher mountains, he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t been able to stop, and he’d gone to the battle where, as he knew beforehand, he would not fight well. And he did not. Twitching in his hidden little depression, hiding out during the one big battle of the war, he could only lie there, twitching, holding his breath in messy gobs, fingers twitching, legs pulled around his stomach like a shell, but his legs twitching too as the bombers came to bomb the mountains. For hours the bombers kept coming. The mountains burned. Burning rock. Then Sidney Martin was up and hollering for the advance. Ready Mix was shot—Ready Mix, whose true name no one knew. They kept advancing. The mountains were taken. And in the mountains they found the dead. They found bomb craters full of the dead—scrawny little men, many of them burned, and the stench was terrible. Nothing moved. The corpses lay in heaps, some still kneeling over their guns. There was great silence. So they spent the night among the dead, and in the morning they began counting bodies, which were sometimes countable only by the heads. They counted captured weapons and crates of munitions and medical supplies. Paul Berlin could not stop the silly twitching. Then, late in the morning, it rained. The craters filled with gray water. It rained that day and the next day. On the third day, still raining, the craters were high with water, and the charred bodies of the dead bobbed to the surface, bloated now. It was then that Doc Peret named it Lake Country. “World’s Greatest Lake Country,” Doc said. They pulled out the bobbing dead and piled them up to be flown away in nets. They searched the tunnels and bunkers, because Sidney Martin ordered it, and in the bunkers they found more dead. They found canteens and the rubble of a hospital where the wounded lay dead in their cots, and they found flakes of burned flesh, and orange peels, and helmets. All through the mopping-up operation the rain kept falling. “Lake Country,” Doc would say, and soon it caught on, and the others began calling it Lake Country. They found more tunnels, a whole series of tunnels through deep mountain rock, and in each case Sidney Martin insisted that the tunnels be carefully searched. It was there, high in Lake Country, that Oscar Johnson began talking seriously about solutions.
Flee, fly, flown … down the granite country, and up, and the train carried them through central Afghanistan, where the rivers were hard and thick, where it was winter now, full winter, and the first-class coach swelled with the smells of man-made heat, dusty machine heat, and they played card games and slept and watched the strange, foreign country unfold like wings.
“Where?” asked the old lieutenant.
“Ovissil,” said the town’s mayor, in whose stone house they spent the night.
“Where?”
“Ovissil,” said the mayor, laughing whenever the lieutenant or Oscar or Eddie tried to pronounce the name of the town. “With your tongue—Ovissil.”
While the tracks ahead were being mended they spent the night in the mayor’s warm stone house. His wife, a sturdy woman on wide hips, served mutton stew and biscuits and cups of milk. Later they watched fire dance in the huge hearth and listened to the wind. All night the storm was fierce. Snow piled high to the windows. The land was cold and frozen, but there was warmth in the mayor’s house. He was a big man with moustaches drooping to his chin; his hair was black; he was a history-teller: “I speak only of history,” he said, “never of the future. Fortune-telling is for lunatics and old women. History is the stronger science, for it has the virtue of certainty without the vice of blasphemy. God alone tells futures. God alone makes history.”
As the blizzard wailed, the mayor of Ovissil smoked his pipe and told histories. He told his own history, and his wife’s, and the lieutenant’s. He told of how the lieutenant had once been an officer of high rank, a captain, and how all that had been ended because of indulgence and simple misfortune, and how God’s will is always stronger than man’s will. “We can live our lives,” he said, “but we cannot shoo them like horses to a stable.”
Later, while the others slept, Paul Berlin asked to have his history told. But the mayor smiled and shook his head. “You are young,” he said. “Come to me when you have had time to make a real history for yourself. I cannot tell unmade histories.”
“I’m not all that young.”
The mayor squeezed Paul Berlin’s arm. “Come to me in ten years. Then you will have a history well worth telling.”
They slept in ram skins.
In the morning the mayor of Ovissil led them to the train. “Travel well,” he said. “Go safely and with God’s blessing.”
He presented a sack of dried lamb to the lieutenant. He kissed the old man on both cheeks and shook his hand and hugged him. There were tears in his eyes.
Then they boarded the train. Outside, in boots and a shaggy coat and cap, the mayor of Ovissil waved and smiled and cried as the train took them away.
Twenty-eight
The Observation Post
He did have a history.
His father built houses, his mother buried strong drink in her garden. He’d played baseball in summer. He’d gone canoeing with his father. He’d gotten lost as an Indian Guide in the Wisconsin woods. Sunday School and Day Camp. A conscientious student: high marks in penmanship and history and geography. A stickler for detail. He had thrown rocks into the Des Moines River, pretending this would someday change its course, imagining how the rocks would accumulate to form new currents and twists, how large effects might come from small causes. Pretending he might become rich and then travel the world, pretending memories of things he had never witnessed. A daydreamer, his teachers wrote on report cards—standoffish and shy and withdrawn, but these would be outgrown. In high school, Louise Wiertsma had almost been his girlfriend. He’d taken her to the movies, and afterward they had talked meaningfully about this and that, and afterward he had pretended to kiss her. He had graduated from high school. Enrolled at Centerville Junior College, earned twenty-eight credits, then quit. Spent a summer building houses with his father. Strong, solid houses. Hard work, the sun, the feel of wood in his hands, a hammer, lifting and striking and waiting. Cruising up Main Street in his father’s Chevy, elbow out the window, smoking and watching girls, stopping for a root beer, then home. He’d become a soldier at age twenty.
Sure, he had a history.
Twenty-nine
Atrocities on the Road to Paris
They took rooms in an old-fashioned boardinghouse in Tehran. It was a quiet place with faded rugs and feather blankets and walls papered with pictures of donkeys and camels. The rooms were clean, and it gave the lieutenant a chance to wait out another bout with the dysentery.
There they celebrated Christmas. Doc and Eddie strung up colored lights in the parlor. Sarkin Aung Wan made candles while Stink brewed up a pot of eggnog. And on Christmas Eve, under cover of dark, they crept into the Shah’s National Memorial Gardens, chopped down a fine long-needled spruce, placed it on Eddie’s poncho, and carried it back like a body through the city’s ancient streets. They spent the night around the tree. Drinking, making awkward talk, they trimmed the spruce with medals and strings and grenades and candles. Later they tried a few carols, then smoked the last of Oscar’s precious dope. It ended quietly. The lieutenant passed out on the parlor floor. Sarkin Aung Wan went up to bed. Stink and Eddie and Oscar rolled craps until dawn. No matter, Paul Berlin thought. It was a land of infidels anyway.
The old man’s sickness persisted through New Year’s and into January. Lying in bed or sitting wrapped in blankets before the windows, he would spend whole days curled inside himself without eating or speaking. It had gone that way since Delhi. Shiny-eyed and freaky. Clutching himself,
rocking, gazing blindly out at the frosted streets. Occasionally, as if something snapped in his memory, he would begin to chant old marching ditties, calling cadence in a voice high and hollowed out. It worried all of them.
“Brains on a half-shell,” Doc said. “I’ve seen it before … fever’s fried the man’s potatoes.”
“That bad?”
Doc shrugged. “Not good. Scrambled eggs an’ hash browns. I seen it before, believe me, but never like this, never this bad.”
Paul Berlin glanced over at the old man, who sat quietly in a chair before the parlor windows. Sarkin Aung Wan was feeding him soup.
“Maybe we should call in a doctor. If it’s—”
“No,” Doc said. “Doctors can’t cure the LT’s sickness. It doesn’t go away after a shot of penicillin.”
“No?”
Doc shook his head, taking off his glasses and wiping them with his shirttail.
“Nostalgia—that’s the basic sickness, and I never heard of a doctor who can cure it.”
“Nostalgia?”
“There it is. The old man’s suffering from an advanced case. Nostalgia, it comes from the Greek. I researched it: straight from the Greek. Algos means pain. Nostos means to return home. Nostalgia: the pain of returning home. And the ache that comes from thinking about it. See my drift? The old man’s basic disease is homesickness. Nostalgia for the goddamned war, the army, the lifer’s life. And the dysentery, the fever, it’s just a symptom of the real sickness.”
“So what do we do?”
“Time,” Doc said. He put his glasses on. “It’s the only antidote for nostalgia. Just give the man time.”
So they waited it out in Tehran, passing without momentum into a new year. They made the usual inquiries about Cacciato, checked the hotels, kept an eye on the train and bus depots. But there were no signs of Cacciato, and the weather was too cold for sightseeing. Except for one visit to the circus and a weekend excursion into the countryside, they stayed close to the boardinghouse. The days were gray and the nights seemed endless. More and more the men talked about moving on. Even Paul Berlin, who enjoyed the peace, felt a hankering for action.
Then they were arrested.
It happened only minutes after the beheading.
A mild winter’s afternoon. They bundled the lieutenant up and led him through the city’s narrow streets—a constitutional, Doc said, a chance for the old man to fill his lungs with clean air. Then it happened. They passed through an archway into a large brick plaza where a crowd had gathered around an elevated platform. The noise was fierce. People were shoving forward.
Using his elbows, Stink led them toward a roped-off area just below the platform. They stopped there.
“A spectacle,” Doc said. “It’s one of those true spectacles of civilization.”
“What?”
“A show, man. Look there.”
Along the rear of the platform colorful banners and flags had been strung up like party decorations. Beneath the bunting, a dozen military officers sat in a row of heavy leather chairs. The officers wore dress uniforms with medals and braiding and insignia. Some of them smiled and waved at people in the crowd.
“Can’t get away from it,” Doc mumbled. “You try, you run like hell, but you just can’t get away.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Look at them.” Doc pointed at two of the officers who were sipping sherry and smoking. “Ringside seats. We should ship them to Nam, sell tickets. Try, but you just can’t get away.”
The noise was tremendous. A small boy in white shorts and sandals was knocked down, disappearing for a moment in a crowd of people shoving forward for a better view. Someone called out. Then the boy was there again, standing. A woman took him by the ear and pulled him away, and people laughed and applauded, and the woman shook her fist. Everywhere the noise was loud.
On the far side of the platform, police were using clubs to form an aisle through the mob. They would beat their way forward, hitting hard, but then the crowds would swell in again, closing the aisle, and the police would then holler and hit harder. Up on the platform the military officers paid no attention to this. They sat in their chairs and made jokes and sipped sherry.
“Here it comes,” Doc said.
He pointed to a police van that had pulled up behind the platform. It inched forward a few meters at a time. The van’s siren was wailing and a squad of police moved on foot to clear a path, but it made no difference. Immediately the crowd surrounded the van. Men were jumping onto the fenders and running boards; others piled on the hood and rear bumper. All the while the martial music blared from loudspeakers at the rear of plaza.
“See?” Doc said. “What did I say? Isn’t it a genuine spectacle?”
“It is.”
“One of civilization’s grandest offerings.”
The lieutenant was sitting down now. His head was in his hands. He was rocking in time with the music.
When the van reached the roped-off area, more police came to form a wedge up to the platform. The crowd turned quiet. There were nervous giggles, one far-off scream. The martial music ended.
For a moment there was absolute silence. Then the van doors opened, and a short, almost emaciated youth of about twenty stepped out. His hands were bound behind him.
Quietly, nodding once to a soldier beside him, the boy passed through the crowd and mounted the platform under his own power. If he was afraid, he showed no signs. His eyes were level. He kept his head and spine erect. After climbing to the platform he stood modestly near the backdrop of flags and banners. He smiled when a soldier came to untie his hands.
“Watch this,” Doc said. He touched Paul Berlin’s shoulder. “Your fine expedition to Paris, all the spectacular spectacles along the way. Civilization. You watch this shit.”
“Let’s go,” Paul Berlin said quietly.
“No, man. No, I want you to watch this. Pay attention, look for all the pretty details.”
So Paul Berlin watched as the slim, well-mannered boy was led to a chair at the front of the platform. The crowd remained quiet, but now the quiet had a hum inside it, a soft buzzing sound. Two soldiers guarded the youth, one on each side of the chair. After a brief delay another soldier climbed onto the platform. He carried a large white towel and a tray of silver instruments. The instruments sparkled in the bright winter sun. Seeing this, the crowd stirred and began pressing forward. The hum grew louder. Somewhere in the back a man whistled and shouted something that made the crowd titter.
Quickly, in brisk motions that showed he had expertise, the third soldier draped the towel around the boy’s shoulders, clipped it, then selected an instrument from his tray.
“Jesus,” Eddie whispered. He looked away, then looked back again.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, sir. Go to sleep.”
“What?”
“A razor,” Doc said. “I think it’s a razor.”
The crowd was clapping now. It was a peculiar sound, almost polite. The clapping ended when the soldier began lathering the boy’s neck, using a brush that he dipped periodically into a shallow bowl on the tray. The youth said nothing. His eyes were open. He bent forward to give the soldier a better angle. The crowd applauded this. Steadily, with crisp professional strokes, the soldier shaved the boy’s neck and a small area at the base of the skull. It took only a minute. Afterward the soldier bowed and offered a clean towel to the youth, who smiled and used it to wipe away the excess lather.
“Tip the fucker,” Stink said. “Why don’t he tip the dude?”
The loudspeakers played marching songs. One by one the officers seated at the rear of the stage got up and went to the boy, kissed his cheeks, then stepped back and saluted and returned to their chairs. An orderly poured more sherry. Later there were two speeches, then more music, and the boy waited patiently through all of it, looking out over the crowd as if searching for a familiar face. His expression was sober but not frightened.
The day seem
ed colder now. There was no wind, and the flags and bunting hung motionless at the rear of the platform.
Paul Berlin tried hard to be calm. Concentration, that was the answer—remember the details, store them up for future understanding.
Doc nudged him.
The boy was being led across the platform to a block of heavy wood. He stood at attention while an officer read a brief statement. Details, Paul Berlin kept thinking. He watched closely. There was a fly on the boy’s nose. The dead of winter, but, yes, it was a fly. The boy kept shaking his head and blowing to get rid of it, but the fly stuck fast. He started to speak. Twisting his head, the youth tried to brush it away, but two soldiers had him by the arms.
“Please,” Paul Berlin whispered. Then he was shouting. “The fly, somebody—”
But the boy’s head was already being pushed down. He struggled for a moment, tongue flicking out, and there were tears in his eyes. It was not fear. It was shame. The youth tried desperately to shake off the fly, shivering now, his neck pressed down into the scooped groove of the wooden block. He swallowed once. Then he blinked. His attention was entirely on the fly. He did not look up when the hooded axeman stepped forward.
The boy’s tongue was still moving toward his nose when it ended.
There was no basket beneath the block.
Detail, Paul Berlin thought. Small irritants: specks of lint, a piece of red clay, clumps of berries in foliage shooting flame, a wet leaking feeling that smothered fear in shame.
Eyes wet, tongue flapping, the youth’s head dropped heavily.
“A spectacle,” Doc whispered.
The crowd applauded. Then the music played. Then the military officers saluted and moved off the platform.
Paul Berlin watched the fly move along the graceful, delicate curve of the boy’s nose.