I hated lying to him. āYeah,ā I said, glad it was dark.
He hesitated. Rain pinged off his helmet. āOkay, but make it quick. I think theyāre asleep.ā
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 couldnāt see more than the splash of moonlight let me, but one of the figures got heavily to his feet. āCrĆ©pet, you came back.ā
I picked my way down the steps. āFor a minute. I brought what you asked.ā I fumbled for the book inside my greatcoat. āI canāt stay. I shouldnāt even be here.ā
His reply was in English, low and guarded, almost private. āThank you for helping me.ā
Gratitude, I didnāt expect. Not from Bauer. Not now. Heād never thanked anyone in all the years I knew him. I dropped the pencil. āItās nothing.ā
He moved closer, just a little bit. I couldnāt see more than a shadow of his face. āItās more than you know.ā 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 hadnāt come.
āDo you remember some of the tricks weād pull on the court?ā he asked, squatting by me.
I edged back. This sudden nearness, this gratitude, this nostalgic remember-when. āYou were always much more serious about the game than I was.ā From outside, Chaffre cleared his throat loudly. āYou always wanted to win.ā 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 Iād dropped the pencil again.
āItās really not so different these days, is it?ā he said. āWe all want to win.ā He clapped a hand on my left shoulder.
āThe game ended long ago.ā I twisted my body away from his hand.
But Iād forgotten about Bauerās drop shot. Iād forgotten that he always knew how to set me up to lose.
Clare had told me not to trust him. I wished I had listened.
When he put his hand on my shoulder and I twisted away, I didnāt see it coming. I didnāt realize Iād left my hip open. Bauer lunged and metal grated. He swung up with my bayonet in his fist.
I swerved, I tried. I didnāt move as fast as he did. That same forehand that won him 299 games caught me full across the left side of my face.
The bayonet was long, edged to the hilt, with a curved quillon. He held it thrust-down when he swung, the way heād pulled it from the scabbard. The quillon slammed into my nose, snapping my head to the side. The blade hissed cold through my cheek.
I caught myself against the wall, against slime-slick rocks.
āYouāve never understood āenemy,ā CrĆ©pet,ā Bauer said, leaning in close. āYou have always trusted too much.ā
Behind me the others had moved in to block my exit. My head spun but I pushed myself off the wall.
āThe little frƤulein, she trusted me, too.ā His eyes gleamed in the dim. āSomeone had to show her Paris.ā
I could still see Clare hunched in that doorway without her hat. āYouā¦ā Dizzy, I pulled the chisel from my belt and lunged at him. He ducked easily. With the bayonet still in hand, he backhanded. Like a wire through clay, the blade sliced through my shoulder until it jarred against bone. The chisel clattered away.
āThree hundred,ā he whispered. He shoved me off the bayonet, against the wall. My head cracked against the wet stones as I fell, and I saw stars. He leaned down close. āI win.ā
I tried to push myself up, to call out a warning to Chaffre, but Bauer squared an almost offhand kick at my mouth. Hobnails tore into my already-cut cheek and I swallowed the cry.
The others waiting by the door parted and let him up the stairs. Someone bent for the chisel, someone else for the pencil. Moonlight skittered across the floor as they followed him up.
I pushed myself up with my left arm, coughing blood. Outside, shadows jerked.
āLuc!ā I thought I heard, but the sound was pulled away into the wind.
Something fell through the doorway and down the stairs, something heavy with a round helmet that clattered away. The door slammed shut, throwing the cellar into a thick darkness, but I was already pulling myself up the rocks to my knees, already crawling over.
āWho is it?ā I whispered, but got no response. I felt shoes, legs, a long French greatcoat soaked with a nightās guard duty in the rain. Buttons straight and neat. Wool sticky and warm, but beneath, faintly, the rise and fall of a chest. āOh, please. Chaffre.ā
I pushed down, feeling ribs, hot blood, and a jagged tear. It was nothing, was it? Such a small hole. I could hold all the blood in. I stretched my hands over the wound and tried to swallow down any doubts. All heād wanted was to be strong enough for all of this. Iād hold him together if I had to.
But his hands scrabbled at mine, pulled my fingers up and away. He brought them to his lips. Against the back of my hand, I felt rasping breaths and an exhaled, āGo.ā
āIām not leaving,ā I said, though my jaw ached to move. From his pocket, I took the little lead Madonna. āHere.ā I tucked the figure into the hand that held mine.
āLuc.ā He inhaled raggedly, then gave a cough. Like a breath, his lips brushed my knuckles. His grip loosened. When I pulled my hand away, it held the lead statue.
I donāt know how long it took to crawl up the stairs, how much strength it took to push that door open, how far I staggered before I found Martel, coming out of the woods buttoning his fly.
āJesus, CrĆ©pet.ā He caught me as I stumbled.
āChaffre,ā I tried to say. āIn the cellar.ā But the words were as shattered as my jaw.
He stared. āIs all that blood yours?ā
āThey got away,ā I managed to say before sliding into blackness.
As far as Glasgow was from the war, I saw both ends of it every day. Buchanan Street and Queen Street stations teemed with raw soldiers from all corners of Scotland, scrubbed and hopeful. Glasgow Central brought them back, worn, weary, wary. There were whispers that some of the trains unloaded their cargo far from the center of the city, where no one would be disturbed by the sight of gurneys and bandages. Scotlandās brave soldiers could appear nothing less.
Mostly, though, the streets were full of women. Brisk, serious nurses, ruddy shipbuilders and munitions workers, black-draped widows, the occasional Belgian or French refugee. Every day I passed by St. Aloysiusā Church, full of women and their quiet contemplation. Though I wasnāt Catholic, sometimes I joined them.
I was so far from the war, yet I felt so near to it with each person I passed in the street, with each troop train waiting at the station, with each pasted newspaper headline, with each kilted soldier, desperate couple, handkerchief pressed to eyes. The breathless, headlong rush of war, brought straight to Scotland.
I kept that smudged map in my pocket, the one Iād torn from the newspaper in Saint-Louis. I kept it to remind myself that the war was just as close for me. Somewhere in France was a soldier I still thought of.
ā
I never knew independence could feel so lonely.
In Glasgow, I didnāt have sand or sunshine or the smells of coffee and spices. I didnāt have blue skies stretching upwards forever. I didnāt have companionable quiet at the supper table. I didnāt have Grandfather.
I did have a narrow bed in a rooming house, a crooked desk too far away from the window, a gas ring that never completely warmed my kettle. The other female students, those fresh from under their fathersā thumbs, rejoiced. āA tiny flat?ā theyād exclaim to one another. āBut itās my tiny flat.ā The only thing that made it mine was the wooden mask hanging on the wall, the one Iād brought back from Mauritania. Iād been to Africa and back. The other women had only made it as far as Glasgow. Listening at the edges of these conversations, I felt lonelier for not understanding.
My first day at the School of Art, I was bewildered. The clean, echoing halls, the well-ordered studios, the big, bright rooms and their high ceilings. Iād been used to painting in the souks of North Africa, strapping an easel onto the back of my bicycle and mixing pigments in the jostle of the crowd as the colors presented themselves. Iād brushed sand from my canvas and picked blown grass from the paint on my makeshift palette. Iād crouched on the banks of the Senegal River, sculpting brown clay. Now, I held my leather case to my chest as I made my way through the pillared front hall of the school, wondering how art could be created in such a sterile place. I wondered how Iād ever find the warmth and color and life that I had on my travels.
I thought I could find it in the students. Young women flocked the halls in excited, chattering bunches, exhilarated at being on their own, at being here, at walking the halls of artists. Some were so young. Their dresses high-necked, their hair braided down their backs, they couldnāt have been long out of the schoolroom. I could scarcely keep up with their nattering. I followed them, soaking in their radiance, wishing Iād had even one girlfriend in my life to know how it was done. Once in the basement corridor, a girl turned to me, mistaking me for someone in her group, and asked whether I agreed that the Artists Football Club was smashing. By the time I accidentally responded in French, she had already moved on down the hallway.