Luc
I found Chaffre out by the stables, sitting with his back against the wall. Blood trickled from his nose and an ugly bruise was already starting to spread up into his yellow hair.
“What happened, man?” I broke an icicle from the overhang of the roof and wrapped it in my handkerchief. “Who did this?”
He took the icy handkerchief with a grateful smile and pressed it to his head. “It’s nothing. Honest. You should see the other guy.”
“I will. Just tell me his name.” I’d never thrown a punch in my life, but I would.
He straightened from his slouch and sighed. “I’m supposed to keep you from getting in trouble. I’m not going to send you into a fight.”
“Oh, you’re not sending me anywhere.” I hoped I sounded confident. I was furious. “Look, you tell either me or the sergeant-of-the-week.” I got an arm under him and pulled him to his feet.
He lurched against me.
I tightened my grip on his arm. “Steady there.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly. He exhaled. “It was Martel.”
I left him on the bench outside and went up to our quarters, taking the stairs two at a time.
Martel was a mean, wiry fellow from the streets of Paris. He was probably also a full head taller than me. When I flew across the barracks at him, though, I didn’t even think of that.
I managed a lucky punch before he realized what was going on, a punch that split his lip and made him yelp. Startled, I had no idea what to do next. I didn’t expect to actually land a blow. He leapt up from his bed and I went the other direction. I wouldn’t get another lucky shot.
The others, though, blocked my exit. They bunched in front of the doorway, cheering. Behind me I could hear the hobnails from Martel’s shoes. I closed my eyes.
“What’s all this?” someone bellowed. The sergeant-of-the-week pushed his way through the crowd at the door. “Line up!”
The shouts cut off as seventy-eight boys raced to stand at the foot of their beds, me included. Martel still stood in the middle of the room, blood dripping off his chin.
The sergeant sent a glare around the room before fixing on Martel. “What happened to you?”
Martel, the rat, lifted his face. “I was attacked, sir.”
“By who?”
I bit the inside of my cheek but Martel stayed quiet.
The sergeant set his feet more firmly on the ground and crossed his arms.
Martel shifted.
“I asked you a question, private.”
From behind came, “It was me.” Chaffre stepped into the room, holding his side. “Sir.”
“You?” The sergeant looked little Chaffre up and down. The boy tossed in blankets, the one they couldn’t lay off pranking. “You hit him?”
“What can I say?” Chaffre cracked a smile. “Clearly it was a lucky shot.”
We all had to stand and listen to a lecture about respect and discipline and our moral duty to our fellow soldier. Chaffre didn’t seem to mind; he wore that sly little smile. Martel looked like he swallowed a lemon. In the end, Chaffre was hauled off for a week in the camp’s Salle de Prison, but not before he threw me a wink.
It had been a year since I’d been back to Paris and my old haunts, a year since I entered the army, but it felt like a decade. Back then my biggest worry had been whether I had enough sous left at the end of the week for a bottle of wine. Now, after July, the month of assassinations, the streets of Paris buzzed with uneasiness.
In the spring, Gaston Calmette, the fierce editor of Le Figaro, was shot six times in his office by the Minister of Finance’s irate wife. Was that what France had come to, where the written word could drive someone to murder? And then, in June, the Austrian Archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo. Whispers were going through the barracks even before Austria declared war on Serbia. We polished our boots and wrote to our mamans.
Paris ran with emotion. All leaves had been canceled, but I wasn’t the only one who bribed the adjutant sergeant and bought an overnight train ticket. I went by Uncle Jules’s apartment to visit Véronique and the parrots. I needed to escape the whispers on the street.
No one dared breathe the word “war,” but everyone thought it. Russia mobilized, the newspapers said. Would we? Walking down the Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, I could feel eyes on me, on my uniform still crisp and officious. I kept my chin to my chest and wished I didn’t have it on.
Then Jean Jaurès, the antimilitarist who was France’s hope for staying out of the war, was shot over his dinner at the Café du Croissant.
Suddenly, the streets weren’t as quiet. No matter what you thought of Jaurès, his death meant something. Some wrung their hands in relief. With Jaurès out of the way, we could push forward to war. And those who opposed it right alongside Jaurès, they mourned and they feared. All of Paris held its breath.
Maman, come to see me? I’d telegraphed. I only have today. Though she hated the city, she came with Papa. She brought me a rose from Mille Mots, a little reminder that somewhere in France it was the same summer it had always been.
As Paris waited, we sat in Café du Champion, waiting, too. Gaspard let us have the table in the back, the one I used to hunch over between shifts with my hurried suppers. Three untouched cups of coffee cooled. They’d pulled their chairs close, on either side of me, and held hands across the table. Maman blinked a lot, Papa cleared his throat and tugged at his beard, and I watched the door. When it happened, we’d know.
“Will you write to me, Maman?” I asked, not knowing what else to say to fill the silence.
Blinking away tears, she shook her head. “You’re not going anywhere.” She wore a little hat, tied through with pale blue ribbons. In it, she looked years younger. “You won’t need me to write you.”
Papa squeezed her hand. “She’ll write to you. I promise.”
“And if you happen to get any letters from…” I pulled the rose closer. “Well, if you do, will you send her my address?”
