“Of all the women in my life, given the opportunity of art school, you’ll make the most of it. Clare, you’re already a traveler. You won’t be satisfied until you’ve seen how far you can go.”
“But Grandfather, I know you, too. I know you’ll be back on the trail of one dialect or another the moment I’m in Glasgow. You won’t be able to stay alone in this empty house.”
“I’ll stay.” He said it, surprised with himself. “Do you hear? I will. As long as you come back to visit, as often as you’re able, I’ll stay.” He shrugged. “I have to start writing the book eventually, don’t I?” He lifted his hand from the painting and let me take it. “The two of us, we’ve been through French West Africa and back. We’ve braved crocodiles and malaria and eating nothing but goat for weeks. And now…now it’s time for the next adventure.”
“Us explorers, we have to stay together,” I said, taking up my painting of Luc.
On Bastille Day a unit of German gunners was taken prisoner. They’d been harrying our line for weeks and were escorted back to Brindeau amid hurled insults. They were lined up on the parade ground—a P.G., for prisonnier de guerre, chalked onto their jackets—and then shoved into a crumbling cellar, our makeshift camp prison, until they could be moved. We all hoped the ceiling would come down on them.
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.
