They were kept without water or food for the rest of the day. It began raining mid-morning, but only mud seeped through the stones of their prison. The Germans bore it in stoic silence. When I came to the cellar with a petrol can of the same oily-tasting water we all drank, all I was greeted with were sullen stares.
I stood in the doorway, waiting for them to come forward. Better that then stepping down into the cramped, low cellar full of Boche. But they stayed hunched around the edges of the room. No one stood. No one even looked up. Muddy rain dripped from the ceiling.
“Yeah, they don’t deserve it.” The guard nudged me with the butt of his Lebel. “Just get down there and then get out.”
I took a deep breath and stepped down the stairs.
I’d been given a can, but no tins for drinking. The prisoners had been stripped of anything apart from the clothes on their backs. I summoned up my long-disused German. “Wölben Ihren Händen,” I instructed, sloshing through the mud. A rat skittered out of my way. One of the Boche cupped his palms for a handful of water, but the rest ignored me. They sat with knees up, battered and bruised from the capture, indifferent.
Except one, hatless, filthy, bleeding, who grabbed my ankle as I shuffled past. “Wait,” he croaked in French. He tipped his head up and, through the black eye, the swollen jaw, the mud-gray hair, I knew him. “Crépet,” he said. “Sorry I missed the Olympics.”
I stumbled. “Stefan Bauer?”
He licked chapped lips and nodded.
“Stefan Bauer?” I asked again, unwilling. This hollow-eyed man couldn’t be Bauer, couldn’t be the glowing, arrogant boy I used to face across the net. Bauer, always so sophisticated and sure. The boy I’d known would never look so defeated. He’d sooner…well, he’d sooner die.
Then I remembered what they’d said when they brought the prisoners in, that the tall one had fought furiously rather than surrender, swearing in French all along. Gaunt as he was, his back was straight. He could be that same boy.
“It’s really you?” My mind moved like marmalade. “Here? Now?”
“Aren’t we all?” He sank back and rested elbows on his knees. It was a sigh of a movement. “These days, nowhere else to be.”
“You’re talkative tonight, le Flemmard,” the guard said from outside the cellar.
Bauer stiffened, so I said, “It’s me he’s calling ‘lazybones.’ ” I switched to German. “We said we’d meet in Berlin in 1916. Instead, here we are.” I held up my can of water.
He cupped his hands. “A Frenchman wouldn’t have exactly been welcome in Berlin.” Most of the water splashed through his fingers.
I tipped the can back up. “I was busy last year.”
He opened his hands and let the rest of the water soak into his lap. I’d been busy, yes, killing his countrymen. A faded black and white striped ribbon, from an absent Iron Cross, was sewn to the front of his tunic. From his side of the line, he’d been doing the same.
One of the other Boche scowled and said, “Who’s this frog-eater you talk to like a friend?”
I started, spilling water down my leg. I hoped the guard outside hadn’t heard.
Bauer, though, growled out something that the German master at school hadn’t taught us, something that earned him a glare and a muttered oath in return.
I backed up, towards the doorway. The water can banged at my shins.
“Wait.” Bauer scrambled to his feet. “A familiar face I never thought I’d see. Crépet, will you come back?” This time he spoke in English, the third language we shared, the one that neither the guard outside or the prisoners inside knew. “We can talk about old times.” His English was better than I remembered.
I shifted the can to my other hand. “I shouldn’t. I can’t.” Out in the sunset, the rain slowed. “I…I don’t have a reason to come back.”
“A letter.” His eyes were earnest, bright. “You can bring me paper and ink.” He nodded, suddenly looking as boyish as he did when I last saw him, five years before. “I want to write a letter to my mama. Do you remember how often I’d write to her?”
I did. “Every week.”
“I always told her what our score was. What was it at that last match?”
“I don’t remember,” I lied.
“I was winning, wasn’t I?”
It was 299-299. “We were tied.”
“Crépet, won’t you say you’ll come back?”
I couldn’t. Without a goodbye, I left into the drizzly sunset.
Chaffre was in the caves, sleeping. I tiptoed around him, but he woke, the way he always did when I was near. “Is it mess time already?” he asked with a yawn.
“No.” I realized I was still holding the water can, and set it down with a slosh. “I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t want to miss a mouthful of cold soup.” He stretched out first one arm, then the other.
“Stop complaining.” I took off my cap and tossed it in the direction of my pack. “Some don’t have anything to eat tonight.”
“I know that.” Chaffre nudged me. “Has it been too long of a week for a joke?”
“I’m sorry.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Don’t mind me. Yes.”
“Now you’re getting this all dirty.” He yawned again and picked up my dropped cap. As though it could get any dirtier. “I’ll shake it out. It’s wet.” He was fussing again. He did that when he was worried.
“Stop that. Everything’s wet and dirty.”
“You should’ve worn your helmet anyway.”
“I forgot.”
“They look like brutes, didn’t they?” He brushed at the hat. “Remember the helmet next time.”
I took the damp cap back. “You worry more than my mother.” I pulled a punch on his arm. “I’m fine.”
He ducked his head. “I know.”
I wrung the cap out. I knew it wouldn’t dry. “Can I ask you about something?”
He nodded, but bent to fiddle with his bootlaces.
Just as steadfastly, I refused to meet his eyes. “Someone you haven’t talked to for a long time should sound different, right? Even when you haven’t heard from them in years?” I set the cap on top of my pack, smoothed it out. “But when they don’t, even though they should, and when you want to listen to them, even though your very insides shout out that things have changed and you’ve drifted too far apart…Chaffre, what then? Do you move on? Or do you remember your years of friendship?”
He stood. “Is that it?” The edges of his eyes relaxed. “And here I thought there was something really worrying you.”
I shifted. “And this isn’t?”
“For years I’ve been hearing nothing but ‘Clare in the deepest reaches of Africa.’ ” He said it almost wistfully. “She writes, finally, and you’re upset?”
“No, it’s…”
“You knew Clare so long ago, back when things were…quiet. Does it remind you of then?”
Though he had the wrong person, he had the right idea. Yes. This Stefan Bauer—battered and beaten, yet not defeated—I recognized. We’d meet on the courts, playing through rain and exhaustion, ignoring our books for just one more match. Refusing to give up. So like Clare, focusing on her art. She set off to capture the world with her pencil, to soak in as much life as she could. Seeing Bauer again, hearing Clare’s name, I was reminded of a time when everything was easier. I was reminded of a time when I didn’t think I could stumble. “You’re right,” I said.
“Ah,” he sighed. “Those happier days.”
They weren’t all happy. I thought of the months between commissions, when Marthe tried to make the soup stretch and the wind blew through the cracked window in my bedroom. Clare, arriving at Mille Mots alone, hiding her mourning. Searching for a mother who didn’t want to be found. That one night she spent in Paris, the night she refused to talk about. Maybe not all happy, but they had to be better than this.