Wind at Dawn (Noble Things)- December 1917 Part Two
Title: Wind at Dawn (Noble Things)
Artist name: tringic
Pairing: Pinto
Genre: angst, h/c, romance, AU
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~47,000
Warnings/Spoilers: Highlight to reveal. War. Death- dead bodies, shooting, etc. Blood. Religion. French. Latin. Suicide-minor character. infant death- minor character. homophobia. MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Really, truly, I mean it, ANGST AND MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH.
Summary: In the chaos of the Great War, Zach is a medic in a camp hospital in Soissons, France. When he meets an American soldier named Chris with a gunshot wound, both their lives change.
Disclaimer: in case the fact that it's set a hundred years ago didn't tip you off, THIS IS FICTION. ENTIRELY MADE UP. NOT BASED IN REALITY AT ALL. and yeah, i'm not getting paid either.
A/N:
Part 1: to my amazing artist, tringic , OMG THANK YOU. to my fantastic betas, 1lostone and rainbowstrlght, THANK YOU SO MUCH. for all the cheerleading, correcting, suggesting, dissecting. THANK YOU. also to emmessann, who stepped in at the last minute to hold me accountable for all my loose ends, THANK YOU. to medea_fic , for being all around awesome and listening to me whine. and last but not least, to garden_hoe21 and 13empress for nobly keeping me on task when i wanted to do was read fic and pretend i'd never signed up.
Part 2: this is a historical AU. most of my historical knowledge is either much earlier or much later, so I tried to research as much as possible, but, in case you didn't know, WWI is kind of a huge topic! i'm sure that there are historical inaccuracies, so if you see them, feel free to point them out. but please know i did try to stick as close as i could to authenticity.
likewise the french. i have studied french, but not in many years, so i'm quite sure that there are errors, whether of vocab or syntax or usage. please feel free to point them out.
Part 3: the fanmix was made by rainbowstrlght , and is amazing! hooray! additionally, if you're interested, while i was writing i listened to a lot of Arvo Part (esp his Te Deum) and also to Eric Whitaker. Tallis, Britten, and Tavener were also along for the ride.
Part 4: HAPPY BIRTHDAY amerasu1013 ! here bb, i tied a ribbon on it and everything! happy reading!
Link to art: http://tringic.livejournal.com/19447.html
Link to mix: http://rainbowstrlght.livejournal.com/199245.html
December Part Two
15th dec. 1917
david died last night. the infection was too much for his malnourished system. germaine is with père louis.
i pulled the sheet over his face. tout ce que je pouvais voir, c’etait son visage.
lui toujours.
it’s been too long. he has been gone too long. i cannot continue to hope.
Requiescat in Pace.
18th dec. 1917
i just… i…
i can’t.
there is a lull. fewer and fewer men.
i have stopped checking their faces.
He wakes as the sun is setting, and feels a sinking in his stomach as he watches the sun in the west grow steadily farther away.
This train is going east.
He shifts, and the jar of beets clanks against his ribs from where it’s lodged deep in one of his coat pockets. The pockets of air inside his blanket are nearly warm, and he burrows deeper under, extracting the carrots from his overcoat and thrusting one into his mouth. The taste bursts across his tongue, acrid and sweet, the burn of an under-grown root vegetable arcing its way through his mouth.
It feels strange to chew, stranger still to swallow, but he does, slowly and carefully. One carrot is enough, for now. He doesn’t want to rush things. He’s lost count of how long it’s been since he ate, but he knows with some surety that it’s been long enough that he’d better take it slow.
The sun across the snowy fields is beautiful, bathing the world in vermillion and orange. It looks as though at any moment the ice might burst into flame, and Chris feels himself sliding into a trance as the train bounces rhythmically along. He shakes his head hard, blinking and forcing himself into awareness. Sleeping would be nice, but he must be nearing a hub soon, and he’ll need as many wits as he can gather to make sure he manages to find himself a way back.
The train begins to slow several hours after dark. It’s been passing through towns for a while now, an interesting change after so many hours of nothing but forest and plain. They’d crossed a big river just around dusk, the rolling waters visible through the slats of the train bridge, black and primeval in the twilight. Chris had scooted to the edge of the car and hung his head over the edge to stare down at the water. He didn’t know what river it was, but it was like nothing he’d ever seen, he was sure of that. The rivers at home were slow and shallow, sunlit and sluggish in their courses. Even the Seine, though she was larger, moved with a certain passivity through her towns, watering the fields with a soft benevolence. This river was different; old, and powerful, swollen with winter rains and iced at the edges, full and heavy with frigid water. He watched it until the darkness swallowed it whole, the last glint of moonlight on its surface shading to black.
The train yard, when they pull in, is empty of people and full of trains. He waits till the train has slowed to nearly a stop, then leaps as soundlessly as possible off the car, dropping and rolling down the embankment. He has wrapped the blanket over his head, hoping to disguise and telltale reflections of light on the pale skin of his hands and face. He waits barely breathing.
Nothing.
He waits a little longer, then begins to pick himself up, moving as silently as possible in his makeshift cloak, weaving his way through the maze of engines and cars toward the light, ears pricked for the sound of feet or voices.
He makes it over to the conductors’ station. The window is lit, and peering through the glass he can make out the shapes of several men talking and laughing. The scent of cigar smoke wafts through the damp air, and he shivers.
Next to the door of the station is a list on a clipboard. The paragraph at the top is in German, but the lists of destinations and loading platforms is easy enough to decipher.
Wien- 1A.
Poznan- 2A.
Krakowa- 3B.
Vaduz- 2C.
Luxembourg- 1C.
Ahah. Luxembourg. Not perfect, but it should get him close enough. He has no idea where he is now, Switzerland, perhaps, or maybe close to the Austrian border. Either way, a train to Luxembourg will get him back into France. And that will get him closer to… Soissons. And Zach. To that strange, elusive, but persistent feeling that if only he can get back, if only he can see him, touch him, be near him again, that all of this will fall away, and he will be left, made new and restored in the other man’s presence.
He replaces the clipboard carefully on its nail, taking a moment to look around, then slides into the darkness in the direction of platform 1C.
It’s a long train, mostly bucket cars, some empty, some full. Near the end he finds an open boxcar and climbs in, pulling himself into a corner behind some crates. He waits, listening, to make sure that the only sound is his own breath as it whispers against the metal, then pulls the blanket over his head and sinks into oblivion.
21st dec 1917
today was the day we were to bury david. Instead we found germaine hanging from a rafter.
he must have done it around dawn, when père louis was leading the service. he must have been quick, too. bastard.
it’s cast a pall. we’ve had death after death, but this is the first by a man’s own hand. voices are subdued, both of the men and the staff.
i’m sitting with them now. david is stiff in the cold; he’s been here three days. germaine is still warm, though his hands are cooling.
this is the thing about dead bodies- they do not look like they are sleeping. there is no breath, no motion; no twitch of eyelash, no spasm of digital muscle. they are inanimate in the truest sense of the word.
first the skin pales. circulation ceases. blood pools where gravity pulls it. skin loosens, chills, becomes like wax. eyes stare, mouths gape, until we in our mortal horror close them.
i do not know germaine’s intent; whether he believed they would be together in heaven or hell, or whether he simply could not live alone?
if it was the second, then he has surpassed his goal.
if the first, then i cannot say.
He wakes abruptly when the train begins to move, flailing wildly and hitting his fist on the side of a crate, biting back a curse.
“Easy, there.”
He jumps, his eyes wide with fear at the voice. Turning his head, he finds himself face to face with a man, bearded and gaunt, but smiling at him from the other side of the crate wall he’s crouched behind.
“Don’t worry, old chap. We’re in the same boat, you and I.” The man grins, showing an expanse of toothless gum. “Escapin’, right?”
Chris nods wordlessly, still fighting back the initial surge of adrenalin at the man’s presence. He unclenches his fists, smoothing his hands over his knees. It’s past dawn now, and the train is moving steadily, the clatter of the rails a soothing monotone beneath them. “Yes, I…” He coughs, swallows. His voice is rusty with disuse. “I’m trying to get back to France.”
“Yank, huh? Trying to get back to France?” The man tips his head curiously, his brown eyes catching the light and shining in a brief echo of that pair he remembers so well. “What’s in France, Sammy-boy?”
Chris turns his face away. The countryside is rolling past at a good clip; farmhouses and outbuildings, cows and sheep and goats.
“My division. The frontlines.” He sighs. “A friend.”
He turns back, eyeing the stranger. British, clearly, though his uniform is in nearly unrecognizable tatters. His beard is long, but wispy, and Chris runs his hand absently over his own inch long reddish-blond scruff. He’s thin to the point of near emaciation, and marked with the dirt of long traveling. “This train goes to Luxembourg, right? How safe are we? What do we need to do?” The panic begins to rise in his throat now that there someone to express it to, and he forces it down as firmly as he can.
The other man muses for a moment, thin fingers wrapping and pulling at his beard. “Well, we’re safe enough for the moment. We’re nearly to Austria, though we’re heading northeast now.” His voice trails off thoughtfully. “We’ll most likely cross territories near the Swiss border; the trains can’t just stop, you know- there’s too much that goes on in the world for commerce to just freeze. But what they can do is search them all.” He shifts his position, huddling deeper into the tattered remains of his coat. “You’ve picked a good ol’ train, righto. She’s got bucket cars of potatoes, and that’s what’ll be our salvation.” He nods. “Come nightfall, we’ll be getting close to the line, and we’ll crawl down the train to the potatoes. If we bury ourselves deep enough, we should be safe- it’s still dangerous, mark my words, but it’s the safest we can be.”
He settles himself against the wall, folding his stick-like legs in front of him. “Best get some sleep while we can.”
Chris’ mind is still stuck on the thought of climbing down the moving train, but he opens his blanket wordlessly, barely noticing the grateful grimace of the other man as he crawls into the slightly warmer fold of the car.
Sleep. Sleep is good.
They wake an hour or so before sunset, shifting positions and sharing a small meal of two more of the wooden, acrid carrots. His companion is less than talkative; Chris thinks he must have been on his own for a while. His name, it appears, is Eddy, and he’s from somewhere near Birmingham. This much Chris gets out of him before he falls terminally silent, watching the passing countryside with a unshakeable determination.
The view is the same interminable field and tree that is has been for all the days that Chris has been traveling. He’s lost track, if he ever knew, of how long he’s been gone. It must be near midwinter, he thinks; the setting sun is very far south in the sky, and it can’t be much past four o clock, if at all, in spite of the fact that the red sphere is flattening like a cracked egg on the horizon line.
Midwinter. Nearly Chrismas, then.
He’s gripped with a sudden grief then, a wretched pulling in his throat as he thinks of his family at home. For all he knows, they think him dead in the battle. For all he knows, Zach thinks him dead in the battle. Have they decorated the tree? Are the candles shining in all the windows? His mother will go with his sister to Christmas Eve mass, the small mission style church surrounded by palm trees in the winter dusk, the evening star low on the horizon. The next morning there will be presents, and food, and laughter, and joy. He can smell the tree, hear their voices. The sound of his sister singing carols, his mother telling stories. His father, reading from Luke. Pere Louis, singing the mass. Zach laughing quietly in the dark.
Does Zach miss him? Think of him at all? He wants to reassure himself that he’s not so easily forgotten, but the weight of the past few days is heavy, pulling him into a sense of total loss. He longs for Zach with an abrupt intensity, a pain in his gut that surpasses the fist of hunger, making his eyes water with a sudden, deep-seated longing just to see Zach’s face again.
The train hits a sudden bump, and he’s jolted from his thoughts hard enough to bruise.
“Come now.” Eddy’s voice is hushed. “It’s near dark enough, and we’re getting close to civilization. We’d best make our move.”
If he weren’t so tired, Chris is sure he’d be more afraid, but as it is, it seems perfectly reasonable to maneuver himself out of the top of the train car and onto the slippery roof. They have wrapped their hands in bits of the wool blanket, which gives them some purchase on the frosty metal, but this was never going to be anything be incredibly dangerous.
They are four cars from their goal; he can see the bucket cars down the line, each filled with an indistinguishable mass of brown lumps. Only four cars, Chris thinks. Four. A nice round number. Only four cars to climb down between, then back up, then across. Four. They can do this.
The first two cars are as easy as they could be; they are slick, but manageable, and the ladders between them are easily gripped and navigated. They cross the tops on hands and knees with no great incident, and Chris is beginning to breathe again, thinking that perhaps this will be better than he thought. The train is not moving particularly fast, and though the light is starting to fail, the bucket cars seem much closer now.
The third car is not quite as easy. The light is nearly gone now, a bank of clouds having begun to move in from the northeast, and for whatever reason, this car is slicker than the previous two. Chris is in the lead, and he inches across practically on his belly. His heart is racing, and he can’t begin to decide if he’s more afraid of falling or of getting caught.
He’s about three feet from the end and the comparative safety of the ladder when the train gives a lurch, and begins to pick up speed. The unexpected momentum throws him flat, and he skids forward, instinctively reaching his hands out to grab at anything, anything that might stop his forward slide.
His hands close on the top rung of the metal ladder and he clutches it, clinging with all his strength as gravity pulls him heels over head until his back slams into the ladder behind him with a whoosh of breath. He sees stars, but scrabbles madly with his feet until he is standing on the rungs and can relax the death grip his fingers have on the uppermost bar.
He stands and breathes for a moment. His back hurts, but he almost doesn’t notice. His head is clear though his knees are shaking, and it’s not until Eddy’s round eyes appear over the edge of the car that he realizes quite how close a call that was.
There’s no time to dwell on it, though; the night is ever darkening, and he can smell the smoke of many chimneys on the wind. They’re closing on the border fast. He steps across to the next ladder, hauls himself up and over, and pulls himself across the roof of the last car.
The stars are out, pinpoints of light in the hazy night as he reaches the far end and climbs down the last ladder and up the next. He’s reached the top of the ladder and is leaning forward to lower himself down, when the train gives another lurch and he’s thrown forward into the potatoes. There’s a shout from behind him, and he lurches upright in horror, scrambling to the edge in time to see as Eddy hits the ground, bouncing as he rolls down the embankment.
Chris feels the shock curl itself around him, and he knows with an abject and horrific certainty that it is too late, that there is nothing he can do. Even if he were to throw himself from the train now, the likelihood that the man has survived the fall is slim to none. And what would Chris do? Where would he take a grievously injured Brit in the edge of Central Power territory?
He sinks back into the potatoes, and begins to methodically bury himself as deep in the middle of the car as he can. The roots are like small rocks, frozen solid and painful. He wraps himself in the blanket and burrows deeper, wrapping his heartsick frame in the filthy stillness of the train car as he draws ever nearer the border.
24th dec 1917
in the bleak midwinter/frosty wind made moan/earth stood hard as iron/water like a stone.
true enough here.
we cannot use the chapel for mass. david and germaine are still at rest. or, if you want to be realistic about it, there are dead bodies on the altar.
it’s not just them, really. we’ve been holding several for a while, waiting for the ground to thaw for just a day, to try and get a hole dug for them.
we can’t wait much longer. the saints awaiting burial are crowding out the saints awaiting to bury.
listen to me. mocking, joking. have I fallen so far? am i truly to the point that i can sit here, holiest of nights even to those of us who are stretching the fingers of the church’s grasp, and mock the number of dead?
Christ preserve me.
27th dec 1917
Our God, Heaven cannot hold him/nor Earth contain.
i pray for him every night.
oh God, in whom i want so desperately to believe, and of whom i have seen too little to trust, you who are so supposedly mighty, so beyond the constraints of “heaven” and earth, have pity. have mercy. grant his soul eternal rest.
It took two more days before he saw the sign for Nancy and jumped. He would have liked to get further, but he didn’t know where the border stood at the moment, and he couldn’t risk crossing lines again.
Crossing the border into France had been risky- he could hear the soldiers, the guards as they talked, inspecting all the boxcars, thumping the sides of the bucket cars to make sure there were no hollow spots where someone might hide.
He’d burrowed as deep as he could without being crushed by the weight above him, and lay still and silent, begging with frozen lips to be passed over. The guards had shoved bayonets into the potatoes, hoping to jab anyone hiding into revealing himself. It had nearly worked; one of the blades had caught his shoulder, but he’d bit his lip nearly through rather than scream, and the guards had moved on.
Now he is safe, in a manner of speaking; he’s on the correct side of the battle lines, and that alone makes his continued survival much more likely. But he is still in uniform, which means he could be caught and accused of desertion at any moment, and he’s still more than a hundred miles from Soissons and safety.
The only way to proceed is one step at a time, so he ties a tourniquet around his arm and sets out to perform the necessary tasks to get him back to safety (to Zach). The first thing to do is to discard his uniform; after much searching, he manages to steal a change of clothes from an abandoned shelled building. They don’t fit well; the pants are too large, and the shirt too small, but they’ll do. He still has the dead man’s coat and the horse blanket, and so he sets out.
Transportation is next; if he tries to walk to Soissons, he’ll never make it. His toes are bad, he knows. He hasn’t looked, but the prolonged numbness can’t be a good sign, and it’s making his limp painful. Hitching is not a good way for him to stay out of the sight of the military officials. He’s done with trains for a while.
The answer to his dilemma comes in the form of an untended bicycle, left leaning against a leeward wall of an alley in the nice part of town; he feels a pang of remorse, but it’s brief. He hops on quickly, pedaling off before the owner can spot him, heading for the road he knows lead north east.
It is a week and a half of pedaling at night and sleeping in hedgerows by day. Several times the bombs drop, and he flings himself into a ditch, huddling in the brackish water with his hands over his head, praying not to be incinerated on the spot. The sky is wide open above him, and he feels hunted, exposed to the eyes of any who choose to look. His breath comes quick and sharp in his chest, and he heaves uselessly, his muscles locking up in spasm as spot swim in his vision, panic consuming the calmer bits of his mind.
He can tell in moments of sharper lucidity that he’s starting to get in a bad way. His toes are still there, as far as he can tell, but only just. His hands are cracked and dry, and though the bayonet gash in his shoulder seems to be remaining uninfected, it aches and throbs and refuses to heal as he bumps along on the bicycle.
He’s fixated now, unquestioningly. The paranoia leaves him, and he breathes the frozen air in spades, gasping it into his lungs to purify himself.
Zach.
He is attuned to Soissons like an astrolabe to the north star, a pendulum to the earth at the apex of its swing, pointing ever westward in search of his friend.
1) Your petit ami, your professeur de l’amour qui s’appelle ne parlait pas?”- “your little friend, your teacher of the love whose name is not spoken?”
2) petits cadeaux- little presents
3) m'empêche de rêver de lui- keeps me from dreaming of him
4) ça t’est égal- it’s all the same to him
5) tout ce que je pouvais voir, c’etait son visage. lui toujours.- all that I can see, it’s his face. Always him.
next
Artist name: tringic
Pairing: Pinto
Genre: angst, h/c, romance, AU
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~47,000
Warnings/Spoilers: Highlight to reveal. War. Death- dead bodies, shooting, etc. Blood. Religion. French. Latin. Suicide-minor character. infant death- minor character. homophobia. MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Really, truly, I mean it, ANGST AND MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH.
Summary: In the chaos of the Great War, Zach is a medic in a camp hospital in Soissons, France. When he meets an American soldier named Chris with a gunshot wound, both their lives change.
Disclaimer: in case the fact that it's set a hundred years ago didn't tip you off, THIS IS FICTION. ENTIRELY MADE UP. NOT BASED IN REALITY AT ALL. and yeah, i'm not getting paid either.
A/N:
Part 1: to my amazing artist, tringic , OMG THANK YOU. to my fantastic betas, 1lostone and rainbowstrlght, THANK YOU SO MUCH. for all the cheerleading, correcting, suggesting, dissecting. THANK YOU. also to emmessann, who stepped in at the last minute to hold me accountable for all my loose ends, THANK YOU. to medea_fic , for being all around awesome and listening to me whine. and last but not least, to garden_hoe21 and 13empress for nobly keeping me on task when i wanted to do was read fic and pretend i'd never signed up.
Part 2: this is a historical AU. most of my historical knowledge is either much earlier or much later, so I tried to research as much as possible, but, in case you didn't know, WWI is kind of a huge topic! i'm sure that there are historical inaccuracies, so if you see them, feel free to point them out. but please know i did try to stick as close as i could to authenticity.
likewise the french. i have studied french, but not in many years, so i'm quite sure that there are errors, whether of vocab or syntax or usage. please feel free to point them out.
Part 3: the fanmix was made by rainbowstrlght , and is amazing! hooray! additionally, if you're interested, while i was writing i listened to a lot of Arvo Part (esp his Te Deum) and also to Eric Whitaker. Tallis, Britten, and Tavener were also along for the ride.
Part 4: HAPPY BIRTHDAY amerasu1013 ! here bb, i tied a ribbon on it and everything! happy reading!
Link to art: http://tringic.livejournal.com/19447.html
Link to mix: http://rainbowstrlght.livejournal.com/199245.html
December Part Two
15th dec. 1917
david died last night. the infection was too much for his malnourished system. germaine is with père louis.
i pulled the sheet over his face. tout ce que je pouvais voir, c’etait son visage.
lui toujours.
it’s been too long. he has been gone too long. i cannot continue to hope.
Requiescat in Pace.
18th dec. 1917
i just… i…
i can’t.
there is a lull. fewer and fewer men.
i have stopped checking their faces.
He wakes as the sun is setting, and feels a sinking in his stomach as he watches the sun in the west grow steadily farther away.
This train is going east.
He shifts, and the jar of beets clanks against his ribs from where it’s lodged deep in one of his coat pockets. The pockets of air inside his blanket are nearly warm, and he burrows deeper under, extracting the carrots from his overcoat and thrusting one into his mouth. The taste bursts across his tongue, acrid and sweet, the burn of an under-grown root vegetable arcing its way through his mouth.
It feels strange to chew, stranger still to swallow, but he does, slowly and carefully. One carrot is enough, for now. He doesn’t want to rush things. He’s lost count of how long it’s been since he ate, but he knows with some surety that it’s been long enough that he’d better take it slow.
The sun across the snowy fields is beautiful, bathing the world in vermillion and orange. It looks as though at any moment the ice might burst into flame, and Chris feels himself sliding into a trance as the train bounces rhythmically along. He shakes his head hard, blinking and forcing himself into awareness. Sleeping would be nice, but he must be nearing a hub soon, and he’ll need as many wits as he can gather to make sure he manages to find himself a way back.
The train begins to slow several hours after dark. It’s been passing through towns for a while now, an interesting change after so many hours of nothing but forest and plain. They’d crossed a big river just around dusk, the rolling waters visible through the slats of the train bridge, black and primeval in the twilight. Chris had scooted to the edge of the car and hung his head over the edge to stare down at the water. He didn’t know what river it was, but it was like nothing he’d ever seen, he was sure of that. The rivers at home were slow and shallow, sunlit and sluggish in their courses. Even the Seine, though she was larger, moved with a certain passivity through her towns, watering the fields with a soft benevolence. This river was different; old, and powerful, swollen with winter rains and iced at the edges, full and heavy with frigid water. He watched it until the darkness swallowed it whole, the last glint of moonlight on its surface shading to black.
The train yard, when they pull in, is empty of people and full of trains. He waits till the train has slowed to nearly a stop, then leaps as soundlessly as possible off the car, dropping and rolling down the embankment. He has wrapped the blanket over his head, hoping to disguise and telltale reflections of light on the pale skin of his hands and face. He waits barely breathing.
Nothing.
He waits a little longer, then begins to pick himself up, moving as silently as possible in his makeshift cloak, weaving his way through the maze of engines and cars toward the light, ears pricked for the sound of feet or voices.
He makes it over to the conductors’ station. The window is lit, and peering through the glass he can make out the shapes of several men talking and laughing. The scent of cigar smoke wafts through the damp air, and he shivers.
Next to the door of the station is a list on a clipboard. The paragraph at the top is in German, but the lists of destinations and loading platforms is easy enough to decipher.
Wien- 1A.
Poznan- 2A.
Krakowa- 3B.
Vaduz- 2C.
Luxembourg- 1C.
Ahah. Luxembourg. Not perfect, but it should get him close enough. He has no idea where he is now, Switzerland, perhaps, or maybe close to the Austrian border. Either way, a train to Luxembourg will get him back into France. And that will get him closer to… Soissons. And Zach. To that strange, elusive, but persistent feeling that if only he can get back, if only he can see him, touch him, be near him again, that all of this will fall away, and he will be left, made new and restored in the other man’s presence.
He replaces the clipboard carefully on its nail, taking a moment to look around, then slides into the darkness in the direction of platform 1C.
It’s a long train, mostly bucket cars, some empty, some full. Near the end he finds an open boxcar and climbs in, pulling himself into a corner behind some crates. He waits, listening, to make sure that the only sound is his own breath as it whispers against the metal, then pulls the blanket over his head and sinks into oblivion.
21st dec 1917
today was the day we were to bury david. Instead we found germaine hanging from a rafter.
he must have done it around dawn, when père louis was leading the service. he must have been quick, too. bastard.
it’s cast a pall. we’ve had death after death, but this is the first by a man’s own hand. voices are subdued, both of the men and the staff.
i’m sitting with them now. david is stiff in the cold; he’s been here three days. germaine is still warm, though his hands are cooling.
this is the thing about dead bodies- they do not look like they are sleeping. there is no breath, no motion; no twitch of eyelash, no spasm of digital muscle. they are inanimate in the truest sense of the word.
first the skin pales. circulation ceases. blood pools where gravity pulls it. skin loosens, chills, becomes like wax. eyes stare, mouths gape, until we in our mortal horror close them.
i do not know germaine’s intent; whether he believed they would be together in heaven or hell, or whether he simply could not live alone?
if it was the second, then he has surpassed his goal.
if the first, then i cannot say.
He wakes abruptly when the train begins to move, flailing wildly and hitting his fist on the side of a crate, biting back a curse.
“Easy, there.”
He jumps, his eyes wide with fear at the voice. Turning his head, he finds himself face to face with a man, bearded and gaunt, but smiling at him from the other side of the crate wall he’s crouched behind.
“Don’t worry, old chap. We’re in the same boat, you and I.” The man grins, showing an expanse of toothless gum. “Escapin’, right?”
Chris nods wordlessly, still fighting back the initial surge of adrenalin at the man’s presence. He unclenches his fists, smoothing his hands over his knees. It’s past dawn now, and the train is moving steadily, the clatter of the rails a soothing monotone beneath them. “Yes, I…” He coughs, swallows. His voice is rusty with disuse. “I’m trying to get back to France.”
“Yank, huh? Trying to get back to France?” The man tips his head curiously, his brown eyes catching the light and shining in a brief echo of that pair he remembers so well. “What’s in France, Sammy-boy?”
Chris turns his face away. The countryside is rolling past at a good clip; farmhouses and outbuildings, cows and sheep and goats.
“My division. The frontlines.” He sighs. “A friend.”
He turns back, eyeing the stranger. British, clearly, though his uniform is in nearly unrecognizable tatters. His beard is long, but wispy, and Chris runs his hand absently over his own inch long reddish-blond scruff. He’s thin to the point of near emaciation, and marked with the dirt of long traveling. “This train goes to Luxembourg, right? How safe are we? What do we need to do?” The panic begins to rise in his throat now that there someone to express it to, and he forces it down as firmly as he can.
The other man muses for a moment, thin fingers wrapping and pulling at his beard. “Well, we’re safe enough for the moment. We’re nearly to Austria, though we’re heading northeast now.” His voice trails off thoughtfully. “We’ll most likely cross territories near the Swiss border; the trains can’t just stop, you know- there’s too much that goes on in the world for commerce to just freeze. But what they can do is search them all.” He shifts his position, huddling deeper into the tattered remains of his coat. “You’ve picked a good ol’ train, righto. She’s got bucket cars of potatoes, and that’s what’ll be our salvation.” He nods. “Come nightfall, we’ll be getting close to the line, and we’ll crawl down the train to the potatoes. If we bury ourselves deep enough, we should be safe- it’s still dangerous, mark my words, but it’s the safest we can be.”
He settles himself against the wall, folding his stick-like legs in front of him. “Best get some sleep while we can.”
Chris’ mind is still stuck on the thought of climbing down the moving train, but he opens his blanket wordlessly, barely noticing the grateful grimace of the other man as he crawls into the slightly warmer fold of the car.
Sleep. Sleep is good.
They wake an hour or so before sunset, shifting positions and sharing a small meal of two more of the wooden, acrid carrots. His companion is less than talkative; Chris thinks he must have been on his own for a while. His name, it appears, is Eddy, and he’s from somewhere near Birmingham. This much Chris gets out of him before he falls terminally silent, watching the passing countryside with a unshakeable determination.
The view is the same interminable field and tree that is has been for all the days that Chris has been traveling. He’s lost track, if he ever knew, of how long he’s been gone. It must be near midwinter, he thinks; the setting sun is very far south in the sky, and it can’t be much past four o clock, if at all, in spite of the fact that the red sphere is flattening like a cracked egg on the horizon line.
Midwinter. Nearly Chrismas, then.
He’s gripped with a sudden grief then, a wretched pulling in his throat as he thinks of his family at home. For all he knows, they think him dead in the battle. For all he knows, Zach thinks him dead in the battle. Have they decorated the tree? Are the candles shining in all the windows? His mother will go with his sister to Christmas Eve mass, the small mission style church surrounded by palm trees in the winter dusk, the evening star low on the horizon. The next morning there will be presents, and food, and laughter, and joy. He can smell the tree, hear their voices. The sound of his sister singing carols, his mother telling stories. His father, reading from Luke. Pere Louis, singing the mass. Zach laughing quietly in the dark.
Does Zach miss him? Think of him at all? He wants to reassure himself that he’s not so easily forgotten, but the weight of the past few days is heavy, pulling him into a sense of total loss. He longs for Zach with an abrupt intensity, a pain in his gut that surpasses the fist of hunger, making his eyes water with a sudden, deep-seated longing just to see Zach’s face again.
The train hits a sudden bump, and he’s jolted from his thoughts hard enough to bruise.
“Come now.” Eddy’s voice is hushed. “It’s near dark enough, and we’re getting close to civilization. We’d best make our move.”
If he weren’t so tired, Chris is sure he’d be more afraid, but as it is, it seems perfectly reasonable to maneuver himself out of the top of the train car and onto the slippery roof. They have wrapped their hands in bits of the wool blanket, which gives them some purchase on the frosty metal, but this was never going to be anything be incredibly dangerous.
They are four cars from their goal; he can see the bucket cars down the line, each filled with an indistinguishable mass of brown lumps. Only four cars, Chris thinks. Four. A nice round number. Only four cars to climb down between, then back up, then across. Four. They can do this.
The first two cars are as easy as they could be; they are slick, but manageable, and the ladders between them are easily gripped and navigated. They cross the tops on hands and knees with no great incident, and Chris is beginning to breathe again, thinking that perhaps this will be better than he thought. The train is not moving particularly fast, and though the light is starting to fail, the bucket cars seem much closer now.
The third car is not quite as easy. The light is nearly gone now, a bank of clouds having begun to move in from the northeast, and for whatever reason, this car is slicker than the previous two. Chris is in the lead, and he inches across practically on his belly. His heart is racing, and he can’t begin to decide if he’s more afraid of falling or of getting caught.
He’s about three feet from the end and the comparative safety of the ladder when the train gives a lurch, and begins to pick up speed. The unexpected momentum throws him flat, and he skids forward, instinctively reaching his hands out to grab at anything, anything that might stop his forward slide.
His hands close on the top rung of the metal ladder and he clutches it, clinging with all his strength as gravity pulls him heels over head until his back slams into the ladder behind him with a whoosh of breath. He sees stars, but scrabbles madly with his feet until he is standing on the rungs and can relax the death grip his fingers have on the uppermost bar.
He stands and breathes for a moment. His back hurts, but he almost doesn’t notice. His head is clear though his knees are shaking, and it’s not until Eddy’s round eyes appear over the edge of the car that he realizes quite how close a call that was.
There’s no time to dwell on it, though; the night is ever darkening, and he can smell the smoke of many chimneys on the wind. They’re closing on the border fast. He steps across to the next ladder, hauls himself up and over, and pulls himself across the roof of the last car.
The stars are out, pinpoints of light in the hazy night as he reaches the far end and climbs down the last ladder and up the next. He’s reached the top of the ladder and is leaning forward to lower himself down, when the train gives another lurch and he’s thrown forward into the potatoes. There’s a shout from behind him, and he lurches upright in horror, scrambling to the edge in time to see as Eddy hits the ground, bouncing as he rolls down the embankment.
Chris feels the shock curl itself around him, and he knows with an abject and horrific certainty that it is too late, that there is nothing he can do. Even if he were to throw himself from the train now, the likelihood that the man has survived the fall is slim to none. And what would Chris do? Where would he take a grievously injured Brit in the edge of Central Power territory?
He sinks back into the potatoes, and begins to methodically bury himself as deep in the middle of the car as he can. The roots are like small rocks, frozen solid and painful. He wraps himself in the blanket and burrows deeper, wrapping his heartsick frame in the filthy stillness of the train car as he draws ever nearer the border.
24th dec 1917
in the bleak midwinter/frosty wind made moan/earth stood hard as iron/water like a stone.
true enough here.
we cannot use the chapel for mass. david and germaine are still at rest. or, if you want to be realistic about it, there are dead bodies on the altar.
it’s not just them, really. we’ve been holding several for a while, waiting for the ground to thaw for just a day, to try and get a hole dug for them.
we can’t wait much longer. the saints awaiting burial are crowding out the saints awaiting to bury.
listen to me. mocking, joking. have I fallen so far? am i truly to the point that i can sit here, holiest of nights even to those of us who are stretching the fingers of the church’s grasp, and mock the number of dead?
Christ preserve me.
27th dec 1917
Our God, Heaven cannot hold him/nor Earth contain.
i pray for him every night.
oh God, in whom i want so desperately to believe, and of whom i have seen too little to trust, you who are so supposedly mighty, so beyond the constraints of “heaven” and earth, have pity. have mercy. grant his soul eternal rest.
It took two more days before he saw the sign for Nancy and jumped. He would have liked to get further, but he didn’t know where the border stood at the moment, and he couldn’t risk crossing lines again.
Crossing the border into France had been risky- he could hear the soldiers, the guards as they talked, inspecting all the boxcars, thumping the sides of the bucket cars to make sure there were no hollow spots where someone might hide.
He’d burrowed as deep as he could without being crushed by the weight above him, and lay still and silent, begging with frozen lips to be passed over. The guards had shoved bayonets into the potatoes, hoping to jab anyone hiding into revealing himself. It had nearly worked; one of the blades had caught his shoulder, but he’d bit his lip nearly through rather than scream, and the guards had moved on.
Now he is safe, in a manner of speaking; he’s on the correct side of the battle lines, and that alone makes his continued survival much more likely. But he is still in uniform, which means he could be caught and accused of desertion at any moment, and he’s still more than a hundred miles from Soissons and safety.
The only way to proceed is one step at a time, so he ties a tourniquet around his arm and sets out to perform the necessary tasks to get him back to safety (to Zach). The first thing to do is to discard his uniform; after much searching, he manages to steal a change of clothes from an abandoned shelled building. They don’t fit well; the pants are too large, and the shirt too small, but they’ll do. He still has the dead man’s coat and the horse blanket, and so he sets out.
Transportation is next; if he tries to walk to Soissons, he’ll never make it. His toes are bad, he knows. He hasn’t looked, but the prolonged numbness can’t be a good sign, and it’s making his limp painful. Hitching is not a good way for him to stay out of the sight of the military officials. He’s done with trains for a while.
The answer to his dilemma comes in the form of an untended bicycle, left leaning against a leeward wall of an alley in the nice part of town; he feels a pang of remorse, but it’s brief. He hops on quickly, pedaling off before the owner can spot him, heading for the road he knows lead north east.
It is a week and a half of pedaling at night and sleeping in hedgerows by day. Several times the bombs drop, and he flings himself into a ditch, huddling in the brackish water with his hands over his head, praying not to be incinerated on the spot. The sky is wide open above him, and he feels hunted, exposed to the eyes of any who choose to look. His breath comes quick and sharp in his chest, and he heaves uselessly, his muscles locking up in spasm as spot swim in his vision, panic consuming the calmer bits of his mind.
He can tell in moments of sharper lucidity that he’s starting to get in a bad way. His toes are still there, as far as he can tell, but only just. His hands are cracked and dry, and though the bayonet gash in his shoulder seems to be remaining uninfected, it aches and throbs and refuses to heal as he bumps along on the bicycle.
He’s fixated now, unquestioningly. The paranoia leaves him, and he breathes the frozen air in spades, gasping it into his lungs to purify himself.
Zach.
He is attuned to Soissons like an astrolabe to the north star, a pendulum to the earth at the apex of its swing, pointing ever westward in search of his friend.
1) Your petit ami, your professeur de l’amour qui s’appelle ne parlait pas?”- “your little friend, your teacher of the love whose name is not spoken?”
2) petits cadeaux- little presents
3) m'empêche de rêver de lui- keeps me from dreaming of him
4) ça t’est égal- it’s all the same to him
5) tout ce que je pouvais voir, c’etait son visage. lui toujours.- all that I can see, it’s his face. Always him.
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