He had been bitter about him, but that was all. Looking at the pale, lined head, looming from the pillow like a stone statue, noble and proud as Jacob had always known he would look in death, Noah made a conscious effort to think of his father. How far Jacob had come searching for this narrow room on the shore of the Pacific. Out of the grimy streets of Odessa, across Russia and the Baltic Sea, across the ocean, into the rush and clangour of New York. Noah closed his eyes and thought of Jacob, quick and lithe, as a young man, with that handsome brow and that fierce nose, taking to English with a quick, natural, overblown, rhetorical instinct, striding down the crowded streets, his eyes lively and searching, with a ready bold smile for girls and partners and customers and travel… Jacob, unafraid, and dishonest, wandering through the South, through Atlanta and Tuscaloosa, quick-fingered, never really interested in money, but cheating for it, and finally letting it slip away, up the continent to Minnesota and Montana, laughing, smoking black cigars, known in saloons and gambling halls, making dirty jokes and quoting Isaiah in the same breath, marrying Noah's mother in Chicago, grave-eyed and responsible for a day, tender and delicate and perhaps even resolved to settle down and be an honourable citizen, with middle age looming over him, and his hair touched with grey. And Jacob singing to Noah in his rich, affected baritone, in the plush-furnished parlour after dinner, singing, 'I was walking through the park one day, In the merry, merry month of May…'
Noah shook his head. Somewhere in the back of his mind, echoing and far away, the voice, singing, young and strong, resounded, 'In the merry, merry month of May,' and refused to be stilled.
And the inevitable collapse as the years claimed Jacob. The shabby businesses, getting shabbier, the charm fading, the enemies more numerous, the world tighter-lipped and more firmly organized against him, the failure in Chicago, the failure in Seattle, the failure in Baltimore, the final, down-at-heel, scrubby failure in Santa Monica… 'I have led a miserable life and I have cheated everyone and I drove my wife to death and I have only one son and I have no hope for him and I am bankrupt…' And the deceived brother, crumbling in the furnace, haunting him across the years and the ocean, with the last, agonized breath…
Noah stared, dry-eyed, at his father. Jacob's mouth was open, intolerably alive. Noah jumped up, and crossed the room, wavering, and tried to push his father's mouth shut. The beard was stiff and harsh against Noah's hand, and the teeth made a loud, incongruous clicking sound as the mouth closed. But the lips fell open, ready for speech, when Noah took his hand away. Again and again, more and more vigorously, Noah pushed the mouth shut. The hinges of the jaw made a sharp little sound and the jaw felt loose and unmoored, but each time Noah took his hand away the mouth opened, the teeth gleaming in the yellow light. Noah braced himself against the bed with his knees to give himself more leverage. But his father, who had been contrary and stubborn and intractable with his parents, his teachers, his brother, his wife, his luck, his partners, his women, his son, all his life, could not be changed now.
Noah stepped back. The mouth hung open, pitiful and pale under the swirling white moustaches, under the noble arch of the deceptive dead head on the grey pillow.
Finally, and for the first time, Noah wept.
CHAPTER FOUR
CHRISTIAN felt like an impostor, sitting in the little open scout car, with his helmet on his head. He held his light automatic machine-pistol loosely over his knees as they sped cheerfully along the tree-bordered French road. He was eating cherries they had picked from an orchard back near Meaux. Paris lay just ahead over the ripples of frail, green hills. To the French, who must be peering at him from behind the shutters of their stone houses along the road, he looked, he knew, like a conqueror and stern soldier and destroyer. He hadn't heard a shot fired yet, and here the war was already over.
He turned to talk to Brandt, sitting in the back seat. Brandt was a photographer in one of the propaganda companies and he had hitched on to Christian's reconnaissance squadron as far back as Metz. He was a frail, scholarly-looking man who had been a mediocre painter before the war. Christian had grown friendly with him when Brandt had come to Austria for the spring skiing. Brandt's face was burned a bright red and his eyes were sandy from the wind, and his helmet made him look like a small boy playing soldiers in the family backyard. Christian grinned at him, jammed in there with an enormous corporal from Silesia, who spread himself happily over Brandt's legs and photographic equipment in the cramped, little seat.
'What're you laughing about, Sergeant?' Brandt asked.
'The colour of your nose,' Christian said.
Brandt touched the burned, flaked skin gingerly. 'Down to the seventh layer,' he said. 'It is an indoor-model nose. Come on, Sergeant, hurry up and take me to Paris. I need a drink.'
'Patience,' Christian said. 'Just a little patience. Don't you know there's a war on?'
The Silesian corporal laughed uproariously. He was a high-spirited young man, simple and stupid, and apart from being anxious to please his superiors, he was having a wonderful time on his journey across France. The night before, very solemnly, he had told Christian, as they lay side by side on their blankets along the road, that he hoped the war didn't end too soon. He wanted to kill at least one Frenchman. His father had lost a leg at Verdun in 1916, and the corporal, whose name was Kraus, remembered saying, at the age of seven, standing rigidly in front of his one-legged father after church on Christmas Eve, 'I will die happy after I have killed a Frenchman.' That had been fifteen years ago. But he still peered hopefully at each new town for signs of Frenchmen who might oblige him. He had been thoroughly disgusted back at Chanly, when a French lieutenant had appeared in front of a cafe, carrying a white flag, and had surrendered sixteen likely candidates to them without firing a shot.
Christian glanced back, past Brandt's comic, burning face, at the other two cars speeding smoothly along on the even, straight road at intervals of seventy-five metres behind them. Christian's Lieutenant had gone down another parallel road with the rest of the section, leaving these three cars under Christian's command. They were to keep moving towards Paris, which they had been assured would not be defended. Christian grinned as he felt himself swelling a little with pride at this first independent command, three cars and eleven men, with armament of ten rifles and tommy-guns and one heavy machine-gun.
He turned in his seat and watched the road ahead of him. What a pretty country, he thought. How industriously it has been cared for, the neat fields bordered by poplars, the regular lines of the ploughing now showing the budding green of June.
How surprising and perfect it all had been, he thought drowsily. After the long winter of waiting, the sudden superb bursting out across Europe, the marvellous, irresistible tide of energy, organized and detailed down to the last salt tablet and tube of Salvarsan (each man had had three issued with his emergency field rations in Aachen, before they started out, and Christian had grinned at the Medical Department's estimate of the quality of French resistance). And how exactly everything had worked. The dumps and maps and water just where they had been told they would be, the strength of the enemy and the extent of his resistance exactly as predicted, the roads in precisely the condition they had been told they would be. Only Germans, he thought, remembering the complex flood of men and machines pouring across France, only Germans could have managed it.
Really, Christian thought playfully, at a time like this I should be humming Wagner. It is probably a kind of treachery to the Greater Third Reich not to be singing Siegfried today. He didn't like Wagner very much, but he promised himself he would think of some Wagner after he got through with the clarinet quintet. Anyway, it would help keep him awake. His head fell on to his chest and he slept, breathing softly and smiling a little. The driver looked over at him, and grinned and jerked his thumb at Christian in friendly mockery for the benefit of the photographer and the Silesian corporal in the back. The Silesian corporal roared with laughter, as though Christian had done something irresistibly clever and amusing for his benefit.
The three cars sped along the road through the calm, shining countryside, deserted, except for occasional cattle and chickens and ducks, as though all the inhabitants had taken a holiday and gone to a fair in the next town.
The first shot seemed to be part of the music.
The next five shots wakened him, though, and the sound of the brakes, and the tumbling sensation of the car skidding sideways to a halt in the ditch next to the road. Still almost asleep, Christian jumped out and lay behind the car. The others lay panting in the dust beside him, He waited for something to happen, somebody to tell him what to do. Then he realized that the others were looking anxiously at him. In command, he thought, the non- commissioned officer will take immediate stock of the situation and make his dispositions with simple, clear orders.
