For a brief instant I felt alive. A surge—furious, frustrated, futile—ran through me. “We can’t go back, can we?”
He shook his head, a distant look in his eyes. I wondered what he was remembering. “What did you once call it? Summer.” He gave an almost wistful smile. “But we can do our best not to forget it.” It was his turn to chuck me in the arm before he left.
For the first time, I borrowed a piece of charcoal and began sketching on the wall. I had to stop a dozen times and smudge out errant lines, but I drew. In those curves and whorls on the limestone, I found my way back to myself.
Summer, Chaffre said. For me, it was Clare who I thought of when I heard the word. That summer, our summer, the last time the world had felt completely and perfectly right. Though it was July now, it felt a thousand miles and a thousand years from then.
For a little while I was able to forget the noise aboveground. The ruin and the cries and the death on the distant lines. The slumped exhaustion down here in the caves. I didn’t want to think about my friend, who I never thought I’d see again, up in that cramped husk of a prison just because he’d been on the opposite side of the battlefield. I didn’t want to think about my comrades—who I’d bedded down next to, eaten cold soup with, marched, weary, alongside—who had fallen beneath that friend’s gun. I drew furiously and forgot.
Chaffre returned with a tin of soup, gray and oily, but I wiped charcoal-black fingers on my trousers and kept my eyes fixed on the wall.
Behind me he quietly watched. His spoon scraped in his tin. “This is something,” he finally said. “I didn’t know you could draw like that.”
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. “Neither did I.”
He was silent for another space. “What’s really eating you, then?” He moved around to my side, close to the charcoal-streaked square of wall. “What’s bad enough to get you to draw, after all this time?”
All of this, I wanted to say. All of this destruction, this suspicion, this fighting for nothing we could see and even understand. But, “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” was what I said.
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I hate it, too.”
When he left, I dug deep within my pack for Maman’s roll of chisels and rasps. The metal was as cold as the bayonet hanging at my side, but each nick along its length was familiar. I remembered afternoons of watching Maman at her stone, singing as she hammered. The tools were battered, but lovingly so, from everything that took shape beneath her fingertips. The bayonet destroyed, but the chisel in my hands, it created.
And so I stood in the caves that echoed with song and laughter and restless horses, eyes stinging with the smoke from oil lamps, and took a chisel to my sketch. I carved the limestone walls and tried to pretend that I hadn’t changed like Bauer had. I wanted to still be the boy who’d sketched in Maman’s rose garden, the same boy who’d been afraid of caves and dragons and kisses under poplar trees. I swung the hammer harder, drove the chisel deeper, knowing that I wasn’t that boy. I knew I’d become the same thing that Bauer had. I couldn’t turn back.
I tucked the chisel into my belt, right next to my bayonet. From my pack, I took a stub of a pencil and the copy of Tales of Passed Times that I had bought for Clare all those years ago. Inside were my few sheets of paper, the ones I used to write falsely cheerful notes to Maman. I put on my wool cap, still damp, and left the caves.
The drizzle from earlier had settled into a sweating downpour. I couldn’t tell how late it was; I’d lost hours in front of that wall of limestone. I tucked the book into my greatcoat and wound my way through the oily dark.
The soldiers guarding the little cellar were hunched over by the door, rain dripping off the brim of their round helmets. One straightened at my approach. The other lit a cigarette.
“What do you want?” he said, tossing his match.
“I’m bringing writing materials to the prisoners.”
The first one tipped back his helmet. “I thought you were busy making great art.”
“Chaffre, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“Guess.” He looked unhappy. He’d pulled guard duty with Martel, the brute who’d hated him since our training days. “Did you eat that soup?”
“I forgot.”
“You also forgot your helmet again.”
I shrugged. “I could use a bath.”
Martel snorted. “Is he your maman, Crépet? Or maybe your girlfriend?”
“Fuck off,” I said, but my face burned. Chaffre never did his fussing in front of others.
“I dunno. You’ve always jumped to defend him.” He took his cigarette out and spit. “Like some damsel-in-distress.”
I started for him, but Chaffre stepped between us. “It’s nothing.” In the moonlight his eyes were pleading.
I stopped, but Martel chuckled and strolled away for a piss.
Chaffre lifted his helmet and wiped his brow. “He’s a bastard.”
“He is. But, hey, don’t rag on me all the time.” I regretted it the moment I said it.
His eyes flickered. “I’m looking out for you. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing out here?”
I forced a smile. “Sure.”
Something clattered onto the ground and I bent to pick it up. Chaffre’s little lead Madonna, the one he carried everywhere. For him to be holding it, out here in the rain, to be worrying and praying, something must still be nagging at him.
“It’ll feel like summer again someday,” I said, and held it out.
He pushed the little figure into his pocket. “Someday.” He shifted his rifle. “So what are you doing here? If I were you, I would be sleeping instead.”
“Delivering writing materials to the prisoners.” I kept my book covered with my hand. “I have orders.”
I didn’t tell him that the orders were nothing more than a plea from an old friend. I couldn’t explain, not even to Chaffre.
“Your own paper? You’re wasting it on them?”
I hated lying to him. “Yeah,” I said, glad it was dark.
He hesitated. Rain pinged off his helmet. “Okay, but make it quick. I think they’re asleep.”
They were, but it was a wary doze that ended when I opened the door and let in a sweep of windy rain down the cellar steps. I couldn’t see more than the splash of moonlight let me, but one of the figures got heavily to his feet. “Crépet, you came back.”
I picked my way down the steps. “For a minute. I brought what you asked.” I fumbled for the book inside my greatcoat. “I can’t stay. I shouldn’t even be here.”
His reply was in English, low and guarded, almost private. “Thank you for helping me.”
Gratitude, I didn’t expect. Not from Bauer. Not now. He’d never thanked anyone in all the years I knew him. I dropped the pencil. “It’s nothing.”
He moved closer, just a little bit. I couldn’t see more than a shadow of his face. “It’s more than you know.” His eyes glittered in the dark.
I bent and felt along the floor. Rain beat against the stairs from the open door. Outside, Chaffre paced, sending his shadow across the floor. Bauer stepped nearer. I wished I hadn’t come.
“Do you remember some of the tricks we’d pull on the court?” he asked, squatting by me.
I edged back. This sudden nearness, this gratitude, this nostalgic remember-when. “You were always much more serious about the game than I was.” From outside, Chaffre cleared his throat loudly. “You always wanted to win.” My fingers connected with the pencil and I straightened.
Bauer stood, and as he did, the others did, too. I took a step back, my heels against the stairs, realizing that I’d dropped the pencil again.
“It’s really not so different these days, is it?” he said. “We all want to win.” He clapped a hand on my left shoulder.