Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

“Let’s be certain.”

“But him not having ID is kind of in his favor.”

“Sure. If he were a German, he’d damned well be fixed up with dog tags and snapshots of his girl back in the States.”

“I’ll go get him,” Trankic said.

Samuel Gelnick stamped through the snow with an armload of firewood and went into the gatehouse. Trude Bonnard stood at the kitchen stove adding vegetables to a thick turkey stew, potatoes and green winter cabbage. Chet Dormund sat at a table cutting up a slab of salt pork with a heavy knife. Madame Bonnard talked incessantly as she worked, telling them how difficult life had been with Germans living at the castle and rocket bombs smashing around their heads, but since her complaints were delivered in rapid-fire French Dormund had only the vaguest idea of what she was saying. His confusion was deepened by the fact that she called him Richard — she assumed that was his name since every other word he used — “wretched” — sounded like “Richard” to her ears.

“How come the old lady calls me Richard?” Dormund asked Gelnick.

“Maybe it’s because she thinks you’ve got a big dick,” Gelnick said. “Like a fungo bat.”

Dormund said nervously, “You shouldn’t talk like that, not in a place like this.”

The sight of the castle against the sky with its suggestion of privilege had made Gelnick feel small and vulnerable. He said now, “Look, instead of Trankic making you a new head, Richard, how about if he makes you a new joy- stick. You never use the one you got for anything but to piss with, so maybe there’s something wrong with it.”

“I ain’t no Richard,” Dormund said. “And you better cut out that wretched dirty talk in here.”

Outside, the change from night to day had been almost imperceptible. Grayness spread slowly above the eastern hills revealing at intervals the white lawns between the gatehouse and Castle Rêve, bringing details into slow relief, marble statuary of nymphs and archers and mythical deities, the classic figures emerging like frozen specters from darker backgrounds of formal gardens bordered with tall clusters of topiary figures overgrown and misshapen from wartime neglect... the giant rabbit had gained a paunch over seasons of inattention, and a hedge of rearing ponies now looked like draft horses with tendrils of shaggy vines hanging from their hooves.

Castle Rêve’s leaded front windows and terraces commanded serene views of the Salm Valley. The castle’s twin towers were ornamental; rising only a dozen feet above an arched roof, the pinnacles had been constructed without windows and perched for effect on slate tilings like a pair of large stone spools.

Tex Farrel and Jackson Baird stood outside the gatehouse waiting to help Dormund and Gelnick haul hot food up to the men on the guns.

Sonny Laurel sat on a wrought-iron bench a dozen yards from them, watching Monsieur Bonnard walking up the road toward the castle, a stout figure in black clothes, smoke trailing from his pipe.

Later Sonny saw Larkin heading in the same direction, but Laurel wasn’t thinking about Larkin or Felice’s father, he was thinking about what had happened to him last night, still barely able to believe it, even with the memory of her blond hair against his face...

Monsieur Bonnard had made sleeping arrangements for the Americans, sending Laurel up to a loft on the second floor of the gatehouse, a room with low, beamed ceilings and walls partially enclosed by the chimney stones connected to the fireplaces downstairs. He had crawled into the bed, scrubbed clean for the first time in weeks, and so dog-tired his muscles were trembling with fatigue. He knew that Tex Farrel and Dormund were outside on guard, he could hear Larkin and Bonnard downstairs in the parlor drinking and talking, and he had been thinking sleepily of his home on the north side of Chicago and of Tom and Betsy Blacker, who lived close to them in a big white house that belonged to Tom’s parents... When Tom Blacker was killed in the Solomons and the Purple Heart and personal effects were shipped back to that big house on the tree-lined Saturday Evening Post street, something seemed to die in the tall, leggy girl-wife who made lemonade for the neighborhood boys and read them parts of her husband’s letters about aerial warfare over straits and islands whose names she could hardly pronounce. Sonny Laurel had just wanted badly to go off and fight what had killed the light in Betsy Blacker’s eyes...

His thoughts had become so langorous that when the door creaked open and Felice Bonnard sat on the side of the mattress he felt he was dreaming. She wore a white flannel nightgown with red and blue flowers hemstitched along the collar, and her eyes were big and solemn in her still face.

Laurel heard a door close softly below, and realized that Monsieur Bonnard knew his daughter was upstairs, and that dry and final dick of the door latch had been a ritual sound of approval.

Felice slipped beneath the eiderdown and he felt her body cold and shivering, and he still couldn’t believe it, not until there was a dawn light in the room and a sound of branches against the window and she was sleeping close to him, her pale face gleaming on the pillow beside him.

Tex Farrel held his rifle in the crook of his arm and studied the ground and trees with a hunter’s eyes. At early dawn he’d seen tracks of fox and deer in the snow and scrambles of rabbit prints under wild berry bushes.

He glanced at Jackson Baird, noting that they were about the same age and wondering why it was he felt so much older than this boy with the blinking eyes and face screwed tight. The men in the section had given the stranger clean clothes but everything was about two sizes too large, and the baggy fatigues and overcoat gave him the look of an orphan.

“Listen to me, Baird,” Farrel said. “You’re worried, I can tell. But if there were any Germans right around here, I’d probably of heard or seen them. So if that’s what you’re worried about, forget it.”

“That’s not what’s bothering me.”

“Then what is? You worried about Docker?”

“That’s part of it. I don’t think he likes me.”

“That’s bullshit. Docker don’t waste time liking or disliking guys. You want my advice, try looking more like a soldier. Snap shit when he tells you to.”

Baird nodded and said, “I’ll try.” Then, as if sensing this wasn’t emphatic enough, he added, “I’ll try like hell.”

They turned at the sound of a motor and saw the jeep with Trankic at the wheel coming up the road toward the gatehouse.

Larkin stood on the terrace of the castle sweeping the meadows with his binoculars. He focused them on Trankic beckoning to Jackson Baird, watching as the youngster climbed in beside the corporal, who then turned the jeep and drove back up the hill toward Mont Reynard.

Larkin began to cough, trying to swallow the brackish bile in his throat and breathing through his gloved hands to warm the air searing his lungs. His cheeks felt raw and peeled. He had shaved at the Bonnards’, a damn fool mistake, and now the wind and sleet were like rough salt on his skin. He uncapped his canteen and took a swallow of black whiskey, and though it almost gagged him the corporal was grateful for the heat moving like sluggish fire through his body.

Larkin turned and went into the castle and walked through several big cold rooms and down a flight of stairs. Paul Bonnard was waiting in the cellar, and Larkin followed him into a kitchen that smelled of mold and stale food. In an adjoining storeroom, Bonnard lit a kerosene lamp and played the light across shelves and bins stocked with food and wine and spirits.

Larkin inspected various jars, casks and crates, knowing then that what Bonnard had told him last night was literally true, that this liquor and food was damn near worth its weight in gold. There were cans of boned ham from Holland and Westphalia, tins of pate, bottles of herring, stacks of fruitcake in waxed linen wrappers, jars of brandied fruits, rabbits packed in lard, French mustards, and wines from France, Italy and Germany, liqueurs from Holland, Denmark, and even a half-dozen cases of Cutty Sark whiskey. On the floor stood several casks of olive oil, sacks of charcoal, massive wheels of cheese and three canisters of Swiss chocolate.