Solitary, listening to the rain—
He’d forgotten the rest. Apologetically, he said, “I’m no good, really, just a hack, but I—I’m better at painting…”
He fell silent. Winter’s cold bony fingers folded around his. “Danke,” he whispered, and his head sank back.
Freddie heard the slosh as Faland drank more wine somewhere in the grand, dusty dark. He turned so he was leaning against the same wall as Winter, so Winter’s head could fall heavily onto his shoulder, so he could hear the slow, strained rhythm of Winter’s breathing. Faland sat cross-legged leaning on a barrel opposite, the wine open beside him. He’d just lit a cigarette. A red point of light shone in one of his eyes but not the other. “Who are you?” Freddie asked.
“Since I seem to have preserved you, I might ask that question first.” Faland shoved his pack of cigarettes across, and a matchbox. After a small hesitation, Freddie took it, lit up. Winter slid further down, until he was lying on the floor, covered in the blanket, his head on Freddie’s thigh. Freddie’s free hand was on his ribs, tracking the shiver of his pulse. The line ran through his head over and over, and he couldn’t make it stop:I pray that none whom once I loved is dying…
“I’m called Wilfred Iven,” said Freddie. “My—friend—is called—” He stopped, feeling obscurely that Winter’s name wasn’t his to offer.
“Never mind that,” said Faland. “I’d rather have a story than a name.” He grinned around his cigarette. The ember made something savage of his smile. “Beeindrucke mich,” he added, with a glance at the silent Winter.
Winter jerked, raised his head, blank as a man in delirium. Freddie, taking the words for a threat, groped for his knife.
But Faland just took another drag on his cigarette. “Stop mantling like a rooster. Tell me your story.”
“It’s all right,” Freddie whispered to Winter, who slowly settled back down. His skin was scorching hot.
“We were ordered up the Ridge,” said Freddie to Faland. “I was—we met there, my friend and I. We came down together.” It was all he could bring himself to say. Poet or no, there were things that he would never put into words.
“Is that all?” said Faland.
Freddie was silent.
“I see,” said Faland. “I will summarize: A man back at General Headquarters moved a few figurines on a map, snapped his fingers, and off you went. Bad luck. And now you’re here. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know!” Under his weariness was an endless anger. At himself. At the entire unrecognizable world. Winter’s hand moved, took Freddie’s, closed round it, dirty palm to dirty palm. He calmed a little.
Faland took another drag. “And so?” he pursued. “Going to put your prisoner in a pen where he belongs?”
I’d kill myself first.The thought came clear and sudden to his mind.
“I thought not,” said Faland. “Going to desert? Off to Holland, are you, to scratch around in ignominy until the war ends? But your friend won’t make it. He needs a hospital. A little iodine won’t doit.”
“My sister,” Freddie whispered. Something about Faland’s steady, detached gaze dragged the truth from him. “She’s a nurse. In the sector. Not far. At Brandhoek. With a mobile ambulance. I’m taking Winter to my sister.”
“An interesting idea. Perhaps you’ll succeed,” said Faland reflectively. He blew out smoke. “And then? Go back to barracks? You’ll have to run through more bullets, you know, when the old man in his château says ‘Jump.’ Such a pity.”
“What do you care?” demanded Freddie, voice rising. “What would you do? What are you even doing here?”
“Oh, go to sleep, boy,” said Faland. “I serve wine, I listen, andoccasionally I play a violin. Your harebrained plan won’t work until it’s dark again, anyway. Go to sleep.” A pause. “I liked your poem.”
Sucking exhaustion rose in Freddie, like a tide. He whispered, “Winter said there’s ghosts all round you.”
Faland snorted. “When you swim in the ocean there’s water all round you, but no one mentions it.”
Freddie didn’t know what he said in reply, was hardly aware of the moment he slid prone to the cellar floor and curled under the blanket with Winter, hardly aware of when, under the twin influences of wine and Winter’s feverish heat, he finally stopped shivering. But even in sleep he felt his hand pressing, pulse to pulse. Once he even thought he heard Winter speak: “Ich weiß, wer du bist.”
And Faland laughing, replying in the same language, “Wer bin ich?”
Then nothing.
BETWEEN DUNKIRK AND COUTHOVE AND PARTS UNKNOWN
March 1918
Try as she might—and Lauradid try, again and again—she could never fully remember the rest of that night in the hotel. Her last clear and certain memory—and even that began to fade after a few days, like an overhandled photograph—was of Pim staring stricken into a tarnished mirror. Everything else was snatches and flashes.
