If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est,
Pro patria mori.
—Wilfred Owen, 19188
1916. Sagres, Portugal
Pedro and Johan passed many port-soaked days in the bar at the harbor. The Crazy Foreigner (estrangeiro louco), or Azul, as he became known because of the blueness of his eyes, was welcomed there as one of their own.
Short of boarding a liner to the Americas or a boat to Africa, Johan could run away no farther. If he was to be found, then at this juncture, he thought, so be it.
The four of them, including the ever-present hound, who was taking on more human sensibilities by the day, often took a boat out when the sea was calm. They enjoyed English and Spanish lessons, as well as the basics of chess, while they fished for dorado, sardine, cod, and flat dabs with hand lines laced with deep beige mussels. Upon their return, they left the owner of the vessel a chunky white fillet for his generosity.
The car sat under a barn roof, superfluous. Cicero would start it up from time to time to keep her from dying, but never when Johan was around. Almost every day, Johan thought of Elena, Drago, Bill, and Kaunitz.
And Lorelei, of course. But they were now so far apart; they might as well have lived centuries apart. What was the difference? There was none.
He would awake some mornings, or in the middle of the night, and consider making his way to Vienna or to New York to find Lorelei, to surprise her and try again, but he had not the guts to face further ignominy. No reverse gear.
Johan could not even take solace in a religion, which would have left scope for meeting those he loved afresh, in a different life.
He was in a cul-de-sac, a dead-end street, and he never did deal with those very well.
As for Cicero, any hint of death had departed along with the dark rings around his eyes. There was meat on his cheekbones, his lips had developed a pinkish hue, and a sparkle could be seen in his brown eyes. His hair was now a dark and healthy silk.
The boys filled their days with long treks with Alfredo while refining their language. They swam off the many local beaches and climbed the grandiose hills above the coves, which took on strange grainy resolutions depending on the Atlantic fret.
Cicero had bought a soccer ball from a local boy in the street, for he was now earning good money of his own by beating Johan at gin rummy. Each night, they shuffled a deck around the fire in the hearth oven in the sparse kitchen. They would play ball for hours down on the beach, with the mutt sometimes joining in but just as often watching politely from the sideline. The sea mist would come quickly and they would play long after it was feasible, the way kids insist on doing. Cicero would have played until dawn had Johan not suggested a sopa de peixe in their favorite café in the village square.
So they would retire to a scabby bench and devour soup and fresh bread, and play chess until Cicero nodded off between Johan’s ponderous moves.
One summer night after supper, as they approached the open front door of their dwelling, the reliably tardy postmaster handed Johan an envelope with a familiar red wax seal. It read as follows:
My Wonderful Boy!
You’re alive, I hope! I suspect as much from my friend at the Bank of Vienna, but this is not adequate proof in itself for a deeply concerned and dear and guilty friend.
I know what it is to run and hide, for I have built a life on doing so.
So, let’s compare notes at the earliest available opportunity, and forget about these cruel and bruised skies under which we find ourselves morbidly lurking.
I would not blame you if you did not return, for there are many places to see and I encourage you to breathe in your exquisite and heavenly youth out there. But please do so with a reassured family, and with a sense of enjoyment, if you might muster up the mind.
Hence Burgundy, claret, and port,
Away with old hock and Madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;
There’s a beverage brighter and clearer.
Yours, wishing that you are gliding gently,
With the plain inscription,
Kaunitz
The letter had been cut. Literally. Scissors had been used. The censorship prodded Johan’s paranoia, but in the wrong direction. He should not have worried about being exposed as the man responsible for torching a continent. The reason for the intrusions into his friend’s correspondence was not Johan but a rampant homophobia that had taken root in Bosnia. The authorities monitored Kaunitz and eyed his every move. They also alerted the equally mean-spirited officials of the postmaster general in Lisbon, whose petty bureaucrats held back or, on a good day, butchered with cuts anything from the Count, whose letters were easily spotted by the red wax seal. As in much of Europe, here was a dark and brooding nastiness which would raise its graceless and vicious head into view soon enough. It was a miracle that one or two letters slipped through the net, but the postmaster’s staff were as inept as they were unfathomably mean. The result of their nastiness was that many dozens, if not hundreds, of missives from Kaunitz to Portugal were stashed in a locker marked Pederastas de Merda, and would therefore never alert the poor young man that, every day, there landed in the castle a letter to Johan from Lorelei. The banking system, however, remained above such murkiness, though Johan worried that the infrequent but necessary money wires he received from Vienna had exposed him. He thought now of his deep friendship with Kaunitz, with its openness and honesty, and this put him in a mind to ask Cicero a question he had long pondered.
“Why were you in hospital, Cicero?”
Cicero closed the dictionary he had been studying, placed his head on his pillow, and stared at the ceiling.
“For nothing. Literally nothing. I was just dumped there by my mother and was rotting. She never wanted me, never loved me, but I do not blame her. I know nothing else. Your sentimental books might have called it a broken heart, but that is just crazy. I was waiting for my moment. You were part of my plan, Johan Thoms. This Cicero, like all Ciceros before, will always make a habit of outstaying his welcome! I will insist on not breaking with tradition!” He weakly waved a paw, as if ending a speech on the steps of the Senate.
Cicero really did believe his own positivity. Born to an indifferent mother, he recognized just how lucky he was to have reached that lonely hospital bed in Mostar in the first place. That he had escaped with a man like Johan, had a fine friend in Alfredo, was learning languages, was breathing the fine ocean air at the end of the continent, and felt the sun on his face and salty water on his feet almost every day of his new life was all a quite remarkable slice of superb fortune. He did not, like Johan, have to remind himself of his blessings. And perhaps this was his true gift, for his appreciation of beauty was unencumbered by worry or remorse.
Alfredo collapsed on Cicero’s feet. Johan smiled and then lowered the gaslight. He then went back out to the porch to smoke a last cigarette of the day, mesmerized by the lighthouse on the rocks above and soothed by the enveloping warmth of the night. He fell asleep in the rocking chair on the porch and dreamed of William Atticus Forsythe Cartwright making him laugh with his vile ideas, his crass theories. He awoke violently in the night from a part of the dream he could not recall. However, as he rose, embedded in his mind were the words
A shadow can never claim the beauty of the image.
He could not reenter his dream, nor even sleep.
It was early on July 1, 1916. Johan knew it was the first of the month because the calendula had flowered. He watched the silent sunrise from his porch, with a mug of gritty coffee in one hand and a lump of floury bread dolloped in strawberry jam balanced on his left knee, unaware that, within three hours, Bill Cartwright’s huge friendly frame would be splattered across a field in France.
* * *
Sarajeeo, February 15, 1915
My dearest J.,
We have a boy. He was born on your twenty-first birthday. Lord knows when you will see this news, if ever. Lord knows if you ever will learn that you are a father, and that he is so very beautiful. I will call him Carl, after your brother. I write to you as if into a void, but I pray that we may soon read these things together, and laugh at my panicked sentimentality. I have a blind spot of deep horror that you will read my daily missives to you far into the future, when I am gone or when we are so old we would not recognize each other were we to meet. I don’t think I could cope with that pain. Perhaps an emptiness would be preferable. I remember the lawns of the Old Sultan’s Palace, and your face that June night not two years ago. I don’t think I would want to see those eyes next in the face of an old man, especially if the regret in them matches mine now.
How dare you rattle my life so wonderfully and then forsake me, you swine?
There are times when I wonder how you can do this to me and to our son. There are lonely hours. There are, however, moments when I am convinced we will be together soon. This war will end and my soldier will come home over the hill. These thoughts see me through, as will Carl now. You would, and you will, be so proud of him.
For his sake I cannot put myself first anymore, especially when I consider what you must feel each day, with this damned war. However, you must not blame yourself, my darling. Those bastards always get what they want, and how dare they pin this on you? Next to your return, I wish for five minutes in a locked room with them. They would then know the meaning of bloodshed.
I will get what I want. You know this. I will find you, Johan Thoms. But I would far prefer to be found. By you, and very soon. I will, of course, write again tomorrow.
I love you. Your son loves you.
Yours, Lorelei xxx