The Shoemaker's Wife(102)

Ciro walked Enza home to Greenwich Village that night. She shared stories about the opera. She mimicked Enrico Caruso, Geraldine Farrar, and Antonio Scotti and made Ciro laugh. He told Enza about the repair cart and his plans for the business when he returned from the war. He marveled again at how easy it was to talk to Enza, and how honest and open he was when he was with her.

They held one another close on the stoop of the Milbank House. Ciro wanted to kiss her good-bye, but she kissed his cheek instead. And that night, she remembered him in her prayers, but she did not pine for him.





Chapter 20

A HATBOX

Una Cappelliera

November 22, 1917

Cambrai, France

Dear Eduardo,

I hope this letter reaches you, as it’s the only one I have written in my time at the front. You know, above all others, how difficult it is for me to describe the world in words, but I will try.

From the first moment of my service, the days have rolled out with such uncertainty that I was unable to describe them. We sailed to England on July 1 on the USS Olympic. There were two thousand of us on the ship, though no one counted. I am in the regiment of General Finn “Landing” Taylor. His daughter Nancy Finn Webster made sure every new recruit had a new pair of socks for our tour of duty. Each of us received a pair when we boarded the ship. It reminded me of Sister Domenica and her knitting needles, clicking for hours on end, making us socks and sweaters.

We ran drills on the deck during the day. We proceeded to Tours, France, by ferry. From there, we walked for hundreds of miles, pitching camp, digging trenches, and when we did not dig trenches, we jumped into the ones that had been dug by the soldiers before us. You couldn’t help asking yourself, “What happened to those men?”

I have been lucky to make some good friends. Juan Torres grew up in Puerto Rico, but lives in New York City, 116th Street. He introduces himself as the proud son of Andres Corsino Torres whenever he meets someone new. He is thirty-two years old, with six children and a wife, and is very devout to Our Lady of Guadalupe. When I told him my only brother was a priest, he went down on one knee and kissed my hand. So please, remember him in your prayers.

I cannot believe what I see here. We spend as much time burying the dead as we do fighting the enemy. We came upon a field, and we could not even see the earth beneath the dead. The wise soldier hardens his heart against all he sees, but I have not mastered that skill. I don’t think I can, brother.

The land is badly scarred, forests have been torched, and the rivers are so full of slag from the fighting that the water has slowed to a trickle. Sometimes we happen upon a small blue lake or a pristine corner of a forest, and I can see that France was once beautiful. Not anymore.

We were told that our regiment was hit with mustard gas. On that morning, I was dreaming, asleep in the trench, sitting in my helmet (yes, better than the mud!), and I thought we were back in the convent with Sister Teresa when she made the aioli bread. But that scent of garlic was not the herb, but the poison of the gas. We were assured by our commander that very little of it blew across our area, but the soldiers think differently. I don’t feel any effects of it yet, and this is good. I don’t smoke too many cigarettes, so I am able to feel my lungs.

I hope to see you in Rome for your final vows in the spring. I think of you every day and send you my love,

Ciro

It seemed to Ciro that there were two ways a soldier tried to survive the war. He had examples of both in his regiment.

There was Private Joseph DeDia, who kept his gun cocked, his helmet straight, his eyes on the middle distance, as if his very gaze would send a message to the enemy. Order and skill would save him.

On the other hand, there was Major Douglas Leihbacher, who patrolled the trenches like a lowly private, making them laugh, conversing with them through the cold French nights. If Major Leihbacher could shore up the spirit, he could guide his men to win the war. A clear goal would save him.

Ciro was a good soldier—he obeyed orders, stayed alert, and performed every duty asked of him—but he remained skeptical of the politics behind the decisions made in the field. The men were often moved from place to place without preparation, and there seemed to be no apparent master plan. Ciro anticipated the worst, coming up with his own contingency plans because he had no confidence in the leaders.

While Ciro was aware of the sacrifice he and the others were making, he had not fully contemplated his own mortality, even as the bullets rained down around him. Every soldier comes to this, a moment when he acknowledges how he will meet his fate. Ciro listened to the voice within and remained focused. He saw the terrible waste of lives across the bloody fields of France. He thought of all those men might have accomplished in their lives. He decided that he would defend his life and the life of his fellow soldiers at all costs. But he would not seek to kill the enemy for the sake of winning the war. He would only kill to defend.

Most of the victories in battle seemed almost accidental. As they covered ground, the regiment came upon an arms storage unit in the barn of an old farm, and later a tank factory where lace was once made. But no intelligence guided them; it was simply vast numbers of men, in regiments that were numbered but not named, that canvassed the small villages of France, in search of whatever they might find, seize, or hold.

There would be entire days when Ciro would think the war was over, with not a single shot fired, or any sign of movement in the distance. And then battle would begin anew. It always began in the same way; faint sounds would grow louder, and within hours, the world around them would explode in a hailstorm of shells and bullets. The tanks sounded like pile drivers that crushed stone in the Alps. Their treads flattened anything in the tank’s path. Ciro, who loved machinery and its design, thought the tanks were ugly. What beauty could be found in something that was created with the sole purpose of destruction?