Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

That reminded me that I needed to retrieve my uniform. I stood hesitantly, my knee quite stiff, to seek Gita. She had been outside saying adieu to the locals. I met her in the parlor, where Bidwell had crawled up on one of the Comtesse's elegant red velvet divans and was fast asleep beneath a lace shawl from the back of the couch.

"Leave him," she said.

"I shall, but I can't take him back to headquarters in culottes."

Gita consulted Sophie, the maid who had washed our uniforms and left them to dry over the same fire, now banked, where the lamb was roasted. As we headed out, Gita threw her arm through mine companionably as I limped along between the puddles etched in the candlelight from the house. The rain had been heavy for a while but had ceased, although the eaves and trees still dripped. The Comtesse's other guests had gone down the road in a pack and their drunken uproar carried back to us in the dank night.

I told her about my conversation with Martin. "Is he normally so dour?"

"Afterward? Afterward, always. Have you known gamblers, Dubin? I have often thought that if there were not war, Martin would probably be standing at a gaming table. Many gamblers have moods like this. They exult in the game, in betting everything, but their spirit flags once they win. Voila la raison. Martin speaks the truth when he says he is miserable without war. That was the case when I met him."

"In Marseilles?"

"Yes. I sold him opium, when he visited from Spain." I managed not to miss a step. I seemed to have prepared myself for anything from her. "He smoked too much of it, but he recovered a few months later once he agreed to go to the States to train as a commando."

"His new wager?" I thought of the way Martin had raised his eyes at the thought of his next assignment in Germany.

"Precisely," Gita answered.

The uniforms were by the barn entrance, now imbued with an intense smoky aroma, but dry. She helped me fold them and I placed them under the arm she had been holding.

"Martin says his remorse is over no longer being who he was," I told her.

"Does he?" She was struck by that. She squinted into the darkness. "Well, who is? Am I who I was when I ran to Marseilles at the age of seventeen? Still," she said, "it is true he suffers."

From what she'd told me, I said, it seemed as if Martin had suffered always.

"D'accord. But there are degrees, no? Now at night, he sleeps in torment. He sees the dead. But that is probably not the worst of it. There is no principle in war, Dubin. And Martin has been at war so long, there is no principle in him. I was not sure he recognized this."

"Ah, that word again," I said. We were standing in the open doorway of the barn, where the dust and animal smells breathed onto us in the wind. Her heavy brows narrowed as she sought my meaning.

"Principles," I said.

She grinned, delighted to have been caught again. And here we debated," she added.

"You most effectively," I answered.

"Yes, I showed you my principles." She laughed, we both did, but a silence fell between us, and with it came a lingering turning moment, while Gita's quick eyes, small and dark and sometimes greedy, searched me out. She spoke far more quietly. "Shall I show you my principles again, Doo-bean?"

The hunger I felt for this woman had been no secret from me. Amid the peak emotions of the day, the increasing physical contact between us had seemed natural, even needed, and the direction we were headed seemed plain. But I had been equally certain that reason would intervene and find a stopping point. Now, I realized there would be none. I felt a blink of terror, but I had learned today how to overcome that, and I also had the tide of alcohol to carry me. Yet drink was not the key. Gita was simply part of this, this place, these adventures. I answered her question with a single word.

"Please," I said. And with that she took her thin skirt in her fingertips and eased it upward bit by bit, until she stood as she had stood two weeks ago, delicately revealed. Then she was in my arms. With her presence came three fleeting impressions: of how small and light she was, of the stale odor of tobacco that penetrated her fingertips and hair, and of the almost infinite nature of my longing.

For a second, I thought it would happen there in the barn, among the animals, a literal roll in the hay, but she drew me to the narrow stairs and we crept up together to the tiny room where Biddy and I had changed. Her blouse was open, one shallow breast exposed. She stepped quickly out of her bloomers, and with no hesitation placed one hand on my belt and lowered my fly, taking hold of me with a nurse's proficiency. We staggered toward the bunk and then we were together, a sudden, jolting, desperate coupling, but that seemed to be the need for both of us, to arrive at once at that instant of possession and declaration. My knee throbbed throughout, which seemed appropriate somehow.

Afterward, she rested on my chest. I lay on the striped ticking of the unmade bunk, my pants still around my ankles, breathing in the odor of the mildewed mattress and the barnyard smells of manure and poultry feathers rising up from below while I assessed who I really was.

So, I thought. So. There had been something brutal in this act, not between Gita and me, but in the fact it had happened. The thought of Grace had arrived by now to grip me with despair. It was not merely that I had given no consideration to her. It was as if she had never existed. Was Gita right? No principle in war and thus no principle in those who fight it? It was the day, I thought, the day. I conveniently imagined that Grace would understand if she knew the entire tale, although I harbored no illusion I would ever tell her.

Gita brought her small face to mine and whispered. We could hear the snores of the farmhands sleeping on the other side of the thin wooden partitions that passed for walls.

"A quoi penses-tu, Doo-bean?" What are you thinking?

"Many things. Mostly of myself."

"Tell me some."

"You can imagine. There is a woman at home." "You are here, Dubin."

For the moment that would have to be answer enough.

"And I wonder, too, about you," I said.

"Vas-y. What do you wonder?"

"I wonder if I have met another woman like you." "Does that mean you have met such men?"

I laughed aloud and she clapped her small hand over my mouth.

"That is your only question?" she asked.

"Hardly."

"Continue."

"The truth?"

"Bien silts."

"I wonder if you sleep with all the men you fight with."

"Does this matter to you, Dubin?"

"I suppose it must, since I ask."

"I am not in love with you. Do not worry, Dubin. You have no responsibilities. Nor do I."

"And Martin? What truly goes on between Martin and you? You are like an old married couple."

"I have told you, Dubin. I owe much to Robert. But we are not a couple."

"Would he say the same thing?"

"Say? Who can ever tell what Martin might say? But he knows the truth. We each do as we please."

I did not quite understand, but made a face at what I took to be the meaning.

"You do not approve?" she asked.

"I have told you before. I am bourgeois." "Forgive me, but that cannot be my concern." "But Martin is mine. And you intend to stay with Martin."

"I am not with him now, Dubin. I am with you."

"But I will go and you will stay with Martin. Yes?"

"For now. For now, I stay with Martin. He says he dreads the day I go. But I stay with Martin to fight, Dubin. Will the Americans allow me to join their Army?"

"I doubt it."

She sat up and looked down at me. Even in the dark, I could see she was narrow and lovely. I ran my hand from her shoulder to her waist, which did nothing to diminish the intensity with which she watched me.