The Last Summer of the World Page 4

  Also, it turned out that he worked hard enough for two men. He arrived early each morning at the Photography Division offices off Pennsylvania Avenue and sometimes left well after dark. Barnes never made it to work before him. When he left for the day, the light on Steichen’s desk would still be burning. Steichen was efficient too; by the end of his first month he’d set up a supply chain for all the components they needed to send the first photographers to the front.

  Barnes was inclined to think of artists as a slovenly lot, shirkers, malingerers, people prone to a certain degree of moral laxity, so this surprised him. Then there was the man’s apparent demeanor outside the office. Steichen, despite being commonly acknowledged as a good-looking man (Barnes, of course, couldn’t really tell such things about other men), wasn’t seen out with girls. When he had leave, he traveled to New York to see his daughter Mary, who was at school there. Otherwise, he didn’t go out much in the evenings. He kept to himself, and so naturally this gave rise to rumors. There was whispering about the peculiar situation of his marriage. People said that he was estranged from his wife. That there was a mistress involved. Others said that Steichen’s wife was unwell, and then they would tap their temple with their forefingers and nod to make sure they were understood. They said that she had taken one of their children with her when she left, that she was living in France near the war zone.

  In all the time they’d worked together, they had never spoken of these matters directly. Steichen had never volunteered the information, and Barnes had always felt that it would be impertinent to ask. They spoke about photographic equipment; appropriation of funds; the war; not about themselves.

  There he was. Coming out of the arched entryway of the station, Barnes recognized that same tall form, slightly stooped under the weight of the bag he had hoisted onto his right shoulder. He looked like a sleepwalker, moving against a current of air that his dream made heavy as water. He began to cross the street as the driver ran to take his kit bag. Barnes watched Steichen wave the other man away, shaking his head. Instead, he handed him a much smaller case, square, suspended from a leather strap; a camera case.

  “Pleased to see you again, Captain,” Barnes said.

  Steichen was looking around him at the station building, the people coming and going through the entrance, the cars pulling in and driving away. “How long is it since you’ve been in Paris?”

  “Four years,” Steichen said. His voice faltered as his spoke. He cleared his throat. “It seems like not much has changed. I somehow thought the damage from the shelling would be worse.” His voice fought its way steady through the words.

  “Yes,” said Barnes. “This part of town has been all right, so far.”

  The driver lifted Steichen’s pack into the car, then opened the door for them to climb in. They slid into the backseat, and the car pulled out into traffic. Barnes watched Steichen staring out the window at the huge façade of the Hotel Terminus Nord crouched on the corner of the Boulevard Sebastopol, its hive of windows and front entrance buzzing with cars and people. He seemed transfixed by what he saw.

  “It turns out that you’ll have some time to decide how much things have changed. More than we thought,” Barnes said. “The sections you were supposed to meet tomorrow are going to be late. Held up at Dover. Problem with the railway schedules. You’ll stay in Paris until they arrive, and you’ll have a little time to yourself.”

  “When do you think they will get here?” Steichen asked.

  “I’d estimate two days from now. That’s if we are lucky. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. Nothing in this war ever happens on time.”

  THE PUCKERED SKIN around a scar—in photographs, that is what trenches at the front resembled. They were jagged, instantly distinguishable from the other features of the landscape seen from above. Rivers meandered, black cut by the white blades of bridges. Roads sliced through the country, near-straight lines in different shades of gray. Hedges and stone walls softly bisected fields into wheat, woods, pasture. These had been written carefully over many years, the works of slow, steady force. They had balance to them; they made sense in the eye.

  The structures of the war, however, had a different character. The trenches bit back and forth into the ground, incisions trembling maniacally across the fields, the wire between the lines, two parallel tracks, strands of blindness. Around them the earth had been blasted into a chaotic new topography. Designed by a god with the shakes, one of the photo interpreters at St-Omer had muttered as he peered at a mosaic of prints, and this description came into Edward’s head whenever he saw a picture of the front. There was an abruptness to this map that the guns had drawn; a frenzy. Hypnotized and repelled, he felt he was seeing something that human beings were never supposed know about themselves.

  Barnes pointed to the diagonal transverse of a road across the left side of the photograph. He followed it with his forefinger.

  “What do you make of that?”

  Edward picked up the print and held it to the light.

  They were in the Photography Division offices. This large back room was taken up by a central table on which were arrayed pictures of the front near Paris. Besides this there were two offices, desks piled with papers and barely enough room to walk between them. A boy with red curly hair sat behind one talking on the telephone in French and scribbling notes. An office off to one side belonged to Barnes, though he spent most of his time at headquarters in Chaumont, to the southeast of the city. The main staff of the American Expeditionary Force had moved there some months before.

  Edward squinted closely at the photograph.

  At St. Omer he’d learned that when a road was used, it wore away. The boots of marching infantry, the wheels of the field guns and supply wagons, the horses’ hooves—all these stripped away the dry surface, revealing rock and soil beneath. From the airplanes, this appeared as a darkening. Compare two prints of the front taken on different days. If a road had turned in the second from pale gray to near black, an army had moved along it.

  “This,” he said, pointing to the road Barnes had indicated, “was recently traveled by a large number of men. They were moving away from the front. They were cutting east, deeper into their own territory. They camped for the night in this field here.” He pointed to the upper right-hand corner: churned soil, the discoloration where campfires and stoves had scorched the grass.

  “This was taken three days ago by British reconnaissance in the Somme,” Barnes said. “They have been seeing men leaving that part of the front for weeks. Emptying ammunition dumps, taking supply wagons, triage tents and machine guns and … disappearing. Pack up quickly. Depart at night. The British have no idea where these units are going. Lose track when they get further back behind the lines.”

  Barnes fished in his breast pocket. He drew out a cigarette case and offered it to Edward, who shook his head no.

  “The French think that they are going north, to Flanders, to try for an advance there. Follow up their successes earlier in the year. Separate the French forces from the British south of Ypres and come down through Normandy. That would be the strategically sensible thing to do.”

  “Do people do sensible things anymore? I thought we had all given that up …”

  Barnes cleared his throat. “General Pershing thinks the French are mistaken,” he continued. “He thinks the push will come further south, out of the Aisne salient. You see, their other option is to follow up Operation Michael, make another push over the Marne, try to take Reims and the road to Paris. Threaten the capital and hope that the Allies will sue for peace.”

  Barnes lit his cigarette and pulled on it, and Edward watched the smoke curl from the burning tip into its strangely intelligent patterns in the air.

  Out of the Aisne River valley and over the slow fields of the Marne, toward Paris, toward this room where he was sitting, looking at photographs of their traces. Edward imagined German soldiers walking through the country near his house, the sound of their heavy boots on th
e road. The few families who had not fled the shelling watching from doorways, hearing their blunt language, calling their children inside, bolting their front doors. It had happened, in 1914 during the first advances of the war. The Germans had reached his house in Voulangis and advanced past it. Then they had been pushed back eastward by the French in late autumn. His house had escaped unscathed that time.

  “I agree with Pershing,” he said. “Just a feeling. They’re going to make a push for Paris.”

  “Well, this is your assignment: go and find us some evidence to back up your hunch,” said Barnes. “There are marines, 42nd Division, in the line in that sector, so Pershing wants American reconnaissance there. You’ll have seventy-five men and three officers. They’re bringing cameras and some other photographic supplies with them. It’ll be designated special equipment for the Photography Division. When they arrive, you will meet them at Épernay and then go on by road from there to the airfield near the town. The French were using it for reconnaissance until this year, so you should find some of the equipment you need already there. The CO is a man named van Horn; he’s a West Pointer, believes in discipline above all else. Volunteers are not his favorite people, but he’s a good officer, efficient. He was with the Lafayette Squadron before we came into the war.”

  “Impressive,” Edward said.

  “Indeed. Once you arrive, get your operation up and running as quickly as you can. We need to have pictures of that area, as many as possible, by next week.

  “In the meantime, I’ve got the French intelligence reports from the region for you to read. I’ll get Gilles to find them when he has a minute. And when you’re done with the work, let me stand you a drink, eh? To mark your return to Paris.”

  THE BOY IN the front office had been born near Meaux. He’d grown up in a village three miles from the city. His father had been a tailor. He did typing and translation for Major Barnes. He did not like Paris much. It was noisy and smelled bad. His name was Gilles Marchand.

  Why, Edward asked, was he in Paris if he disliked it so? Gilles shrugged.

  “To work,” he said. Couldn’t he help his father in the tailoring business?

  “My father went to war with the Territorials from our commune. He is dead now.” He went on sorting and clipping papers, his hands moving in a strange precise way, the minimum motion necessary to accomplish the task, as though movement was a scarce resource that must be used sparingly. Edward thought he was finished speaking, but then he continued, unprompted: His brothers, too, had been called up to the Territorials. They had been killed at the great fortress of Verdun. In February of ’16. All four together, all in one week.

  “My mother and one sister are left. So, I must work.”

  “Why weren’t you called up?” Edward asked.

  “Because my legs are no good,” Gilles said. The telephone on his desk rang, and he reached to answer it, ending their conversation. Edward opened the first file of reports and began to read.

  A little later the doorbell rang for the second post, and Gilles bent down and pulled a pair of crutches from the floor beside him. As he came out from behind his desk, Edward could see his body clearly for the first time. One of his legs was almost normal, the foot pointing forward, the knee moving in counterpoint to the swing of his crutches, but the other dragged behind him, useless and buckled. This was why he hadn’t gone into the Territorials with his father and his brothers. This was why he was still alive, and they were not. He moved to the door with an uneven lope, and as he made his way along the corridor outside, Edward could hear the swaying sound of his progress. A sharp clack and then a slow dragging sound, as though the bad second foot was hushing the good one.

  About half an hour later, Gilles came to give Edward his letters. He put the bundle of small envelopes down on the desk.

  “Thank you,” Edward said. He smiled briefly and went back to the report he was reading. But the boy remained where he was, standing just to one side, waiting.

  “Yes?” Edward said, looking up.

  “What is it like to fly?”

  THE PLACE THAT Barnes took him after work was full of soldiers. They took seats at the bar, and Barnes signaled for the bartender. In the far corner, a group of Englishmen had taken over the piano and were howling out songs. One of them started with the first couple of lines, then the rest joined in when they recognized the words, lurching along until they couldn’t remember any more and the song fell apart. Then they would begin another.

  At the next table, some French infantrymen were talking, their voices loud, so they could hear each other over the singing.

  “Over seventy miles away, and still they can reach us.”

  “At the Tuilleries, six buildings are gone all of a sudden, like that.” The man talking snapped his fingers.

  “Like the Zeppelins in ’14.”

  “Worse than the Zeppelins. Those you could see coming. Those you could shoot down.”

  “Nothing left on one side but rubble. Children climbing on it …”

  “This is how it will go from now on. You are standing there and then, bang, gone.”

  “… climbing and chasing each other. Laughing, until the police chased them away. They didn’t understand there were people trapped underneath.”

  “This is the new kind of war. A modern war.”

  “What happened in the Tuilleries?” Edward asked Barnes. He pointed to the men at the next table.

  “Oh, they’re talking about Bertha. The German long-range gun. What’ll you have to drink?”

  “Whisky, please.”

  When they had been served their drinks, Barnes said, “You used to live near Épernay, didn’t you?”

  “Not far from there. I have a house near the Marne, in a town called Voulangis. A nice place, with beautiful views of the river. That’s why I asked to be sent to that part of the front.” He took a long swallow from his drink. He felt it right away, sinking into him, warm and heavy.

  Barnes took a cigarette from his case. “How long did you live there?”

  “Six years, right up until the war.”

  “And your house has been standing empty since the war started?”

  “No. First the Germans used it as a billet for their officers in ’14, and then the French and the British. And my wife …” he stopped. “Could I have a cigarette? I came out without mine.” Barnes handed him one. Edward took his time lighting it, and drawing in the smoke. “Thank you,” he said. He swirled the remains of the drink in the bottom of his glass and downed it. He looked for the bartender, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

  “Go ahead, Steichen.”

  “Yes, right …” Edward wondered which would be more awkward now: to change the subject or to go on. Barnes sat beside him, waiting for him to finish his sentence, perhaps a little more eager than was polite, because a man who began a sentence about his wife and then didn’t finish it must have an air of scandal about him. This was how it had been since Clara left. There was always the trapdoor waiting inside even the most innocuous conversation about the past, dropping him through into things that were difficult to describe and more difficult still to understand. He took a deep, resigned breath.

  “My wife, you know, came back during the war.”

  “Came back?”

  “To France, and lived in our old house.”

  “By herself?”

  “No. With my younger daughter, Kate.”

  Some combination of exhaustion, drink, the shock of being in Paris, was conspiring to loosen his tongue. He hadn’t spoken about this to anyone in Washington or St-Omer. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell it now, but he went on anyway.

  “She lived in our house in the Marne for nearly two years,” he continued. “Now she lives in Tennessee and has a job working for the Liberty Loan effort.”

  “I see,” said Barnes. “No … I don’t see.”

  “We left France when the war started and went back to America. But then Clara came back here. In 1915. And then last yea
r, quite abruptly, she picked up and went back to the States again.”

  “That is a lot of ocean voyages back and forth,” Barnes said.

  “Yes, it’s almost comical. She left America for France shortly after the Lusitania was sunk. Then she left France for America not long after America came into the war.” He laughed mirthlessly. “As if she’d just waited for the crossing to become even more dangerous than it was before.”

  “And why did she …” Now it was Barnes’s turn to stop in midsentence and look down at his glass, embarrassed.

  “Leave me?” Edward asked, forcing the question to its conclusion.

  “Yes.” Along the bar, Edward spotted the bartender at last and raised his arm to call him over.

  “Because of a misunderstanding,” he said. “Would you like another drink?”

  They ordered and then sat for some minutes in silence. The English at the piano started a new song: O my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine. You are lost and gone forever …

  Edward spoke first without looking at Barnes. “Yes,” he said. “Wife gone; house still there. When the war is finished, I’ll go back to it. Replant the garden. Repair the studio I had. The house looks down on the whole valley. It has a grange and a walled garden behind, and a field where I used to grow vegetables. My photographs are still there, actually, and my paintings. Whatever else is left of my worldly possessions.”

  “Well, in that case,” Barnes said, “I hope that you are wrong in your intuition about where the next big push will come. I hope the Germans will attack in Flanders after all. If it happens in the Marne, as you think, your house could be badly damaged by the shelling.” Barnes took a long drink. Where are our uniforms? one of the Englishmen roared, his voice hoarse, and the others joined in: Far, far away. When will our rifles come? Perhaps some day.

  “Have you been to the front yet?” Barnes asked. “Up to the actual lines? On the ground, I mean, not from the air. There are some things you can’t tell from an airplane, even when you fly low. The smell, for one. You don’t get that up there. It smells like … well, nothing I’ve ever been near before.”