Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

Martin eventually arrived at the center of the kitchen by the huge iron stove and called for silence. He praised our success and the courage of everyone present and thanked the gallant Comtesse yet again for her bravery and magnificent hospitality throughout the weeks they had waited.

"I raise my glass last to those of you who were with me. To do what we do and live, one must be lucky. You were all my luck today."

There was applause, shouted congratulations, to which Gita's voice was eventually added from the back of the room.

"I am always your luck," she called. "It's boring. Every time, the same thing. Martin fights, I save him. Martin fights, I save him."

This was comedy, and her parody of the shrewish country wife evoked drunken laughter. Inspired by her audience's enthusiasm, Gita mounted a chair to continue, very much the girl who had seen herself as the new Bernhardt. Now she engaged in a dramatic retelling of the story of Martin's capture by the Gestapo early in 1943. The Nazis had not recognized him as an American. Suspecting instead that Martin was a Frenchman connected with the underground, they imprisoned * him in the local village hall, while they investigated. Knowing there was little time, Gita stuffed her skirt with straw and arrived in the receiving area of the hotel de ville, demanding to set the German commandant. At the sight of him, she dissolved in tears, decrying the son of a bitch who had left her with child and now was going to prison without marrying her. After twenty minutes of her ranting, the commandant was ready to teach Martin a lesson, and sent four storm troopers to bring him in chains to the local cathedral where the marriage could be performed. It never was, of course. The four soldiers escorting Martin and Gita were set upon by two dozen maquisards, resistance guerrillas, who quickly freed them both.

"I curse the fate that intervened," cried Martin in French, raising his glass to her. "I will marry you now.''

"Too late," she cried, and on her chair, turned away, her nose in the air, an arm extended to hold him at bay. "Your horse has eaten le bebe."

Their tableau was received with more resounding laughter and clapping. A moment later, as the first of the crowd began departing, Martin took the chair beside me. I had barely left my seat. The cognac had me whirling.

"You did well today, Dubin."

I told him sincerely that I hadn't done much more than fire my MI a few times, but he reminded me that we had all been in harm's way when the machine gun had swung toward us. He stopped then to ponder the circle of brandy in his glass.

"That was unfortunate with those young soldiers. I don't mind killing a man with a gun pointed at me, but I took no pleasure in that." I, on the other hand, had still given no thought to those deaths. I was aloft on the triumph and my reception as a hero. I was surely different, I thought, surely a different man.

"When I was their age," he said of the two Germans, "I'd have thought they had met a good end. Foolish, eh? But as a young man, I woke up many days feeling it would be my last. Gita and I have this in common, by the way. I recognized the same fatalism when I met her. The bargain that I struck with myself to forestall these thoughts was that I would die for glory. So that at the moment that the bullet entered my brain, I could tell myself I had made this a better world. I was looking for a valiant fight for years until I found it in Spain. But it turns out I'm a coward, Dubin. I am still alive, and now an old warhorse.

"You are the furthest thing from a coward I have ever met, Major."

He made a face. "I tell myself each time I will not fear death, but of course I do. And I wonder what all of this has been for."

"Surely, Major, you believe in this war."

"In its ends? Without question. But I have been making war now for a decade, Dubin, give or take a few years off. I have fought for good causes. Important causes. But I mourn every man I've killed, Dubin. And not merely for the best reason, because killing is so terrible, but because there really is no point to so many of these deaths. This boy today? I killed him to save all of us at the moment. But I don't fool myself that it was indispensable, let alone the dozens, probably hundreds, we left dead or maimed in that garrison. We make war on Hitler. As we must. But millions get in the way and die for the Fuehrer. What do you think? How many men do we truly need to kill to win this war? Ten? Surely no more than one hundred. And millions upon millions will die instead."

The tragedy of war, I said.

"Yes, but it's a tragedy for each of us, Dubin. Every moment of terror is a month of nightmares later in life. And every killing like today's is a mile farther from ever feeling joy again. You think when you start, 'I know who I am. At the core, I am inviolate. Permanent.' You are not. I did not know that war could be so terrible, that it would crowd out everything else in a life. But it does, I fear, Dubin."

I was startled by this speech, given my own buoyancy. But Martin was not the first man I'd met to find gloom in alcohol. To comfort him, I repeated the prediction I'd heard tonight that we were going to make short work of the Germans, and Martin answered with a philosophical shrug. I asked what he would do then.

"Wait for the next war, I suppose," he answered. "I don't think I'm good for much else, that's what I'm saying, unless I spare the world the trouble and put an end to myself. I really can't envision life in peacetime anymore. I talk about a good hotel room and a good woman, but what is that? And I am not so different, Dubin. Soon everyone will be driven into this lockstep. War and making more war."

"So you think we will fight the Russians, Major?"

"I think we will fight. Don't you see what's happening, Dubin? No one has choices any longer. Not here and not at home. I always thought that the march of history was forward, less suffering and greater freedom for mankind, the chains of need and tyranny breaking apart. But it's not what meets my eye when I look to the future. It's just one group of the damned making war on the other. And liberty suffering."

"You're in the Army, Major. This has never been freedom's Valhalla."

"Yes, that's the argument. But look at what's happened on the home front. I get letters, I read the papers. War has consumed every liberty. There's propaganda in the magazines and on the movie screens. Ration books and save your tin cans. Sing the songs and spout the line. There's no freedom left anywhere. With one more war, Dubin, civil society will never recover. The war profiteers, the militarists, the fearmongers-they'll be running things permanently. Mark my words. Mankind is falling into a long dark tunnel. It's the new Middle Ages, Dubin. That's the bit that breaks my heart. I thought fascism was the plague. But war is. War is." He looked into his glass again.

As he spoke, Teedle came to mind. I wondered if Martin and he had had this argument face-to-face. Or simply suspected as much of one another. They both saw the world headed to hell in a handbasket. I gave them credit for worrying, each of them. For most of the men out here, me included, the only real concern was going home.

"May I assume I am quit of your charges?" Martin asked then.

I told him I'd certainly recommend that, but that the safest course, given the orders he'd received, would be for him to return to Nancy with me in the morning to sort it out. He thought it through, but finally nodded.

"I'll spend a few hours," he said, "but I have to get on now to the next assignment." That would be the operation in Germany he'd mentioned when I first arrived here, the one for which he'd been called back to London. "I think it will be the most important work I've done, Dubin. There's no counting the lives we may save." He lifted his eyes toward the bright light of that prospect, then asked when I wanted to start in the morning. Dawn, I said, would be best, given how long we'd been away.