Lovely War(82)

Aubrey and émile quickly developed a language of their own, of parroted French and borrowed English phrases. They knew enough of the other’s language to be thoroughly confusing, such as when Aubrey misused the French for wind, vent, for the word for wine, vin, and told émile he’d like some more wind after dinner, s’il vous plait. émile obliged him with an award-winning fart. If they could’ve lit the fart, it would’ve made a Flammenwerfer.

Beans for dinner. Good times.

émile taught Aubrey how to survive at the Front. How to tell shells apart, and explosives from gas. How to creep quietly, and discern vent sighing in the trees from a tiptoeing Boche raiding party. How to heat a tin can lid over a tiny flame and fling caught lice pinched from clothing down onto the red-hot tin till they sizzled and popped like popcorn.

In Maffrécourt, where they were billeted, Aubrey found a piano in a bombed-out tavern. It wasn’t in the best condition, but Aubrey gave émile a show that brought others from K Company for an impromptu performance.

After that, émile Segal trotted out his pianist comrade every chance he got, claiming all bragging rights. The way those poilus danced to the first jazz they’d ever heard made Aubrey want to shove his fist into his mouth to keep from cackling out loud. Aubrey taught them the fox-trot, lest they die and go before the pearly gates dancing like a pack of clowns with arthritis.

Until they entered the trenches in earnest on April 13, 1918, Aubrey performed every night. émile should be a booking agent after the war, Aubrey thought. He sure knew how to draw a crowd. And Aubrey sure liked having one.

The Champagne sector was quiet, and they counted themselves lucky. They could hear the drums of war thundering along the line to the north. But here, not much was being shot besides wild boar. And the only pain in his heart, besides the loss of Joey, was the fact that day after day, no letter came from Colette.





APHRODITE


     Any Work Will Do—March 29, 1918





AFTER A WEEK of roaming, silent, arm in arm, through the streets of Paris, mourning, Hazel and Colette managed to face mundane reality and find war work. Any kind. Just something.

It was hard. Everyone wanted to know what they were doing in Paris, a Belgian girl and a British girl. They must’ve been doing war work already, and what was it? How did it end? Were there letters of reference? Had there been any problems?

Colette was too mute with sorrow to talk their way into a position, and Hazel wasn’t prepared with smooth, confident, not-too-terribly-dishonest answers. Admissions boards saw right through her and declined her applications.

Finally they found an agency desperate enough to take any help they could get. It was low, menial labor, work few other volunteer enlistees would do. The sort of work that neither Hazel’s parents nor Tante Solange would approve of. But it was all they could find.

The work neither assisted victory efforts nor aided soldiers. Allied soldiers, that is.

They took employment working in kitchens, preparing and serving food with a Red Cross agency overseeing the concentration camps in France for German prisoners of war.





HADES


     The Pink Room—April 12, 1918





IT WAS THE QUIET that first startled James. The quiet, and the clean.

The bedclothes were crisp and white. His light blue pajamas felt soft against his skin.

I’ve died, he thought. This is Heaven.

A hospital is Heaven?

The sunlit room was modern and spick-and-span. Its walls were pink. At his bedside stood a vase of daisies. There were no sounds of shelling. Only city traffic in the street below.

A nurse entered. She wore a gray dress, a white apron, and a short red cloak. A white armband displayed a large red cross, and a white veil held her hair off her face and neck.

“You’re awake,” she said. “Would you like some water?”

She poured him a glass, and he gulped it down. When the water hit his tongue, he realized how sandpaper-dry and foul it felt. He held out the empty glass, and she poured him more.

“What day is today?” he asked. His voice cracked. It sounded alien and young.

“It’s April twelfth,” she told him.

He shook his head. April twelfth. The battle . . . when had that been?

The battle landed on him an avalanche. No, no, no, no.

The nurse took his wrist between her cool fingertips. She smoothed hair off his forehead.

“It’s all right,” she told him. “You’re safe here. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.”

“Where am I?” he croaked.

“You’re at Maudsley Military Hospital,” she told him. “In Camberwell. South London.”

London. Back in Britain. Hazel. Pink walls reminded him of her.

The nurse gave him a plate with chicken and mashed potatoes in a cream sauce, and tinned peas rolling about the plate. After trench fare, it looked like a feast.

“Let’s come sit in this nice chair by the window, shall we?”

He let the nurse help him up.

“There we go. That’s right.” She situated a tray in his lap. “Let’s feed you up, and get your strength back. Then you can look out and see the trees. That’ll do you good.”

The nurse left. He scraped up a dab of potato and placed it on his tongue. His mother made better food, but after bully beef, this was fit for a king. He gulped it down, then dove into the chicken, and chased the peas around with the edge of his knife. The knife barely cut the chicken at all. Then James realized. He must be in a mental ward. Can’t give sharp knives to the mental cases.