Lovely War(34)

“Maybe the French don’t know a coon when they see one, but you can’t fool an Alabama boy,” said a red-haired soldier. “An ape’s an ape, no matter what uniform you put on him.”

Lieutenant Europe’s body stiffened. His eyes somehow found each member of 15th New York’s K Company and silently ordered them not to respond. Aubrey felt rage swell in each breath—his, and his comrades’. It was as if they breathed as one body. As if he could feel their flexed, coiled pain as keenly as his own.

“Soldier! State your name and rank.”

A white mess sergeant had emerged from the kitchen, addressing Mr. Alabama.

“Private William Cowans, sir,” the soldier answered, saluting as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Army One Hundred Sixty-Seventh Infantry, Forty-Second Division.”

The mess sergeant frowned. “Rainbow Division? They left for the Front weeks ago.”

The pair looked like they’d pulled a fast one. “We stayed back,” Cowans said. “Measles.”

The sergeant turned to the aproned cook serving oatmeal, standing with wide eyes and an outstretched spoon. His face was more pimple than not. “Don’t let these soldiers’ food get any colder, Durfee.” Private Durfee began scooping porridge while the sergeant turned toward the Alabamans. “You. Measle-mouth. General Pershing’s ordered me to feed soldiers, not cowards and pigs. Your commanding officer will hear about this.”

Cowans and his hanger-on slunk away and left the mess, muttering to themselves. When the door had banged shut behind them, the sergeant saluted briskly to the black soldiers.

“Welcome to France,” he told them. “Mess Sergeant Charles Murphy. Sunnyside, Queens.”





APHRODITE


     Pathétique—January 8, 1918





EARLY MORNING, Hazel found, was a time when she could have the entire Y hut to herself. Ellen, her roommate, slept in late, and Colette, next door, did the same. The older women, Mrs. Davies and a middle-aged Miss Ruthers, woke abysmally early and went to a secretaries’ planning meeting most days with the head secretary for all of Saint-Nazaire, a Mr. Wallace. (They coiffed their hair specially for him.) This left Hazel with an hour to play without bothering anyone.

This day, a Tuesday, she began by sight-reading through the more-requested titles from a book of popular songs she’d found in the piano bench. They were light pieces, lots of military march tunes, and humorous songs like those her father played at the Town Hall. She turned to a bright rondo by Mozart that made her smile, and then the second movement of Beethoven’s eighth piano sonata, the “Adagio cantabile” especially. “Pathétique.” A tender, romantic piece, filled with longing.

She played it for James.

Come back to me. Come safely home. Let no harm find you at the Front.

She was back at the parish dance. Back in his arms. Back in the flood of nerves and terror and bliss and heat and wool and bay rum. And a smooth cheek resting against her forehead. The memories were still as sharp and clear as when they were new.

Her hands sank to her lap. A dangling chord echoed across the empty stage.

“Don’t stop.”

Hazel jumped. The piano bench legs scraped the floor. She couldn’t spot the speaker.

“I’m sorry.” A figure stepped from the shadows. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He was a young soldier, black, and tall.

“You didn’t scare me,” she told him. “I just thought I was alone.”

“You’re British,” he observed with some surprise.

“And you’re not.” She held out her hand. “I’m Hazel Windicott. I’m from East London.”

The young man shook her outstretched hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Windicott. I’m Aubrey Edwards, from Upper Manhattan. And you should never feel stage fright.”

She smiled. “That’s very kind of you.”

Now that he had stepped out of the shadows into the patch of pale sunlight near the stage, she got a good look at him. He carried himself with a soldier’s upright bearing, but not a soldier’s stiffness. His eyes drifted hungrily, over and over again, to the piano.

“Do you play?” she asked him.

His face lit up. “I do.” He started inching toward the instrument. “I’m in the Fifteenth New York Band.”

“How wonderful!” Hazel clapped her hands. “Your concert here last week was marvelous. Your sound! Incredible! Soldiers talked about it for days afterward.”

“We try to keep your toes tapping.” He grinned. “When we’re not sweating away at laying tracks by day, we’re sweating away at rehearsals and shows by night,” he said. “A soldier in a military band does double duty. But that’s what I enlisted to do.”

“Please, come sit.” Hazel offered him the piano bench. “Relief hut pianos take a beating. There’s only so many times you can play ‘Over There’ before the hammers break. And ‘Chopsticks’! Twenty times a day, someone sits down to play ‘Chopsticks.’”

He slid himself behind the keys and explored them, playing a quick chromatic scale. “Not bad,” he said, “for an army piano.” He immediately played “Chopsticks.”