‘Conrad.’
‘It’s me, I’m here.’ He used his knife to cut a length of the parachute cord he always carried with him.
‘They rigged it, they rigged the body, the sonsofbitches rigged the body.’
Conrad fashioned a hasty tourniquet and secured it above the left knee.
‘You sonsofbitches!’ screamed the Professor. ‘YOU SONSOFBITCHES!’
Conrad wanted to say ‘Keep quiet, don’t give them the satisfaction,’ and he prayed the Germans were long gone.
The Professor struggled, resisting, as Conrad tried to apply a tourniquet to his other leg.
‘Lie still, goddamnit.’
‘Don’t do it, don’t do it.’
The Professor twisted, rolling away. Conrad went after him, straddling his chest, pinning him to the ground.
‘I don’t want to live. Not like this.’
He was sobbing now, slapping at Conrad with his only hand, snatching at the loop of rope.
‘Okay,’ said Conrad, holding up his hands in surrender.
The Professor stopped resisting. ‘Thanks, thanks…’ he gasped.
Conrad slugged him on the jaw, fitted the tourniquets and applied sulfa to the stumps.
He was doing double time along a dirt track about a mile from Cori when the Professor came to, slung over his shoulder like a sack of fish meal. Conrad closed his ears to the curses. The pummeling of the fist on his back was too weak to have any effect. They said there were no atheists in trenches, but not once did the Professor call out to God, remaining an unbeliever till the end, which came a few minutes later, half a mile shy of the aid station. Not that they could have done anything for him. Way too much of his blood had already soaked into Conrad’s fatigues.
He laid the Professor in the grass beside the track and sat with him a while. Then he carried him the rest of the way in his arms.
The two medics on duty at the aid station were enjoying a wellearned rest, but they insisted on checking Conrad over for injuries. He could have told them that beneath all the gore he would be completely unmarked. When they were done, they set him up with a shot of brandy and stretchered the body away.
He was gone before they returned, pounding off down the track, back towards the hills.
It was reckless soldiering, but stealth wasn’t the answer. He could have crept through the wooded slopes for the rest of the night and never found them. The answer lay in covering as much terrain as possible, crashing his way through the undergrowth, drawing attention to himself.
He was making his way up the side of a valley when a burst of fire raked the branches above his head. He hit the ground, scrabbling for cover behind a tree. Someone shouted in German—a challenge.
‘
He was gone before the first mortar tore into the trees. If they were using the mortar they must be occupying an area of open ground beyond the tree line up near the ridge. He dismissed the idea of a direct assault, not because the terrain would play in their favor, but because he figured they’d soon be thinking about retreating. They knew who they were up against, they’d heard the stories, and the silence of the night would soon transmute into fear.
He was waiting for them near the foot of the neighboring valley—two mortar crews, six men, pounding down a woodland path, equipment clattering. Whether they were the ones responsible, he neither knew nor cared, his head thick with thoughts of vengeance.
He had already pulled the pins from the grenades, but he waited for the point man to pass before tossing them, opening fire before they exploded, ducking behind a tree as they did so.
The two who didn’t die immediately, he finished off with the knife. One was very young, wispy hairs masquerading as a mustache, wheezing his last terrified breath as Conrad slowly slid the blade between his ribs, talking to him, cursing him, the same words the Professor had hurled at him, handing them on: take these with you.
When he was done, he smoked a cigarette then placed the barrel of the M-1 in his mouth, but he was unable to pull the trigger.
He returned to Cori via the pasture, recovering the Professor’s shattered glasses from the long grass.
It was a miracle that the glasses had somehow stayed in his possession for the remainder of the war. He took it as a sign that they had, and he’d kept them on the writing desk in his bedroom ever since.
One evening, as Lillian was undressing, she had asked him, ‘What are these?’
She stood naked beside the bed—completely unabashed, as she had been from the very first—turning the glasses in her hands.
‘Nothing,’ said Conrad.
‘Are they yours?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
She replaced the glasses on the desk, turned the light off and joined him in the bed, snuggling up close.
