Andersonville (66 page)

...Mother, Mother!

Hm. You are smiling so hard I know you have great news.

Mother, he’s going to permit me—

Now, I am glad! That is his business, Nathan; it is a father’s business, not the business of a mother, to decide such things. But for your sake I am so glad he decided that you are to go. Nathan, come and look. I have finished my bananas.

Yes—they’re wonderful. They’re like gold—

Bananas, real bananas, are like gold—

Mother, I’ve been considering. I think I’ll buy Tomás from the gardener.

Buy Tomás? I thought you planned to borrow a mule if—

But, you see, then I should feel that Tomás was
mine.
He’s a splendid donkey, young enough not to tire, but splendidly disciplined. Nor does he bite or kick. Olmedo loads him with rock, halfway up to the old Gibralfaro, and brings him down with it—two great panniers, heavy as can be. Back and forth, all the day through, up and down. And still Tomás is ready for more. I’ve ridden him at sunset after he’d toiled like a slave, and he was fairly ready to canter—

Hm. That will take your savings.

But it would be such a lark,
ma chère maman,
to know that he was mine. I should feel like an emperor—like one of your people stepped from that needlepoint frame. Hills, valleys, vistas,
las montañas, las colinas—
all
mine, all mine, spread before my gaze as if I were king of the entire landscape—

Ah, young ambition! Nate, you should not wish to be a king.

Of course not. I don’t wish to be one truly. But—you know the feeling I mean—

Ja, ja, ja,
the feeling of possession. It brings security, and that is what we seek. But what would you do with Tomás after you’re coming back from your jaunt in the mountains? Where would you stable him? We have no room in our stable.

Tomás isn’t very large and he’s
very
good tempered. I should think that Carlos might make room for him somewhere.

But Carlos says that horses do not like to be stabled with
mulos.
And
who would feed and water poor Tomás? You should have to pay one of the servants; and you know how your father bids you not to be extravagant because you are a rich man’s son.

Well,
es verdad.
I suppose you’re right, Mother, as usual. Very well. I’ll
rent
Tomás from the gardener!

That is my wise son. When shall you depart on your adventure?

Oh, not until Monday. Hang it all—I promised the monks I’d bring my fiddle and play for those old blind people on Sunday. They said it would be a joy to them.

Nathan, you play very well. I wish your dear grandfather had lived longer so that you might have heard him play—

I did hear him, when I was a little tad. Twice, in Boston.

But then you were too young to appreciate. I had hoped so that you would take up the violin in the way he did. But that means work, work, work, practice, practice, practice, the livelong day.

Ha. Precious chance I’ve had for that, living here and there as we do—

But, Nathan, you don’t truly
like
to practice.

I know it, hang it all. But I don’t play too badly as it is. And at least Mr. Halliburton says I’ve done well with my studies. He must have praised me to Father, or I’d never be permitted to go.

Nathan, he did praise you to your father; I heard him do so. And I think that Mr. Halliburton is the very best tutor we have found for you, ever. Should you like to invite him to go back to America in the fall, with us, after we leave England?

Oh,
Madre
!
He’s a hundred times pleasanter than that old Revere, and a thousand times more intelligent than Cuff was. That would be simply ripping!

Very well, I myself shall speak to your father about it. We will see. It will be expensive—the passage—but— Nathan, one thing. When you ride to the mountains, you must forget who you are. You must be dressed very simply—almost like—

I know—like a peasant—in rough clothes!

You speak almost perfect Andaluz, or so I hear the servants say. So I am not worried about— And you are tall and strong, you can run foot-races, you are a fine fencer. So I shall not worry about— But, my son, there
are
bandits in those mountains. Many.

But I’ll travel like a poor chap, I’ll put up only at the cheaper inns.

Well, God go with thee.

She looked at him after he had kissed her and was gone prancing away to dicker with the gardener— She looked at him as he left the room, and before she adjusted her specs again— She looked at him lovingly and thought, Life has been and is being too easy for my son. But what can one do? Should I want him to starve as I starved when I was a little girl, when my own father could not get work in the cafés? Should I want him to tramp the roads with a peddler’s pack on his back, as dear Solomon did when he was of the same age? But Nathan does not seem cut out for a merchant. He does not seem cut out for anything except to be a dear sweet son! And he is kind of heart. Thank God!

Nathan’s impulse was to buy beautiful accoutrements for Tomás; indeed this was nominated in his agreement with Olmedo. Reluctantly he decided that new harness must wait until his return: the crimson-and-purple halter, the embroidered bands of heavy stitched fabric to bind Tomás’s chunky body, to pass below his efficient fly-batting tail— These might attract envy and cupidity along the road, they would most certainly attract attention. Accordingly the boy set forth with a newly curried Tomás but with the old patched stained furniture. One basket carried the few necessaries which Nathan allowed himself in the way of clothing and toilet articles, another held bread, cheese and wine against emergencies. He was armed with a damascene clasp-knife from Toledo and a rusty double-barreled pistol bought in Sheffield when he was twelve; his father warned him to keep this armament out of sight. He had also his long-saved hoard of money concealed in an old innocent-looking loaf of bread, together with a bottle of saleratus to be used in case of snakebite, and a volume of Lord Byron. The entire household gathered in the courtyard to wish Nathan godspeed and to criticize his appearance . . . his legs were so long that they nearly touched the ground. Solomon Dreyfoos said that if Tomás grew weary Nathan must pick the donkey up and carry him. Olmedo the gardener embraced first Tomás, then Nathan, then Tomás again; this would be the first time Olmedo and Tomás had ever been separated since Tomás was a colt and was first acquired. Olmedo’s dark tinny cheek quivered at thought of it, and the tears ran and split amid his wrinkles. He always called Nathan
Hombre!—
which pleased Nathan exceedingly. The
camereras
waved their aprons, and mule and rider picked their way through the gate out into busy Málaga with its towering carts and moving black boulders of oxen. In this way Nathan rode into one of the most rewarding experiences of his young life, and he had been trained and had been shown the way to find a reward in almost any experience.

...Soldier, is the sun staring meanly? Does it burn your eyeballs and crack your lips? Retreat into the cave.

The steps had been formed as early as the Fourth Century A.D., or so an earnest and archeologically-inclined old priest believed . . . Nathan Dreyfoos and the priest crawled there together, Nathan going first across the slanted fissured crumbling stair, the priest following with cassock belted up, his bony legs arching down, his sandals seeking a safe hold on the surface. Down through fig boughs and blackberry vines, down through shadows where fat grass-green lizards held up their gargoyle heads in alarm and then scooted away. Down to the altars thirty meters below. Roofs of both chapels had fallen in—an earthquake was believed to have shaken the huge squared blocks apart, some hundreds of years since—and thin silky moss waved like miniature fields of wheat on the rich slimed slabs. No other people, no spectators, no ghosts . . . the priest knelt before the damp seeping altar with its defaced fresco depicting San Jorge above; he prayed briefly. Nathan Dreyfoos stood with straw hat in his hand, watching, listening to the flutter of birds in fig branches far overhead, the increasing flutter of speedy little bats in stalagmited caverns beyond San Jorge’s ruined altar. Sun was low behind the mountains, soon it would be evening, Nathan’s watch said that it was almost seven o’clock . . . but coolness coming from these fissures was never implacable, never born of decay. Something lived deep in the blackness, and that thing which lived was not a Fright, it was gentle and dignified, golden as a candle flame.

My son, you do not pray.

Often I pray, but I do not kneel here. I am a Jew.

But many Catholics in Spain are Jews, or were Jews. Why, what of the Jewish bishop of Burgos? What of the great artist Gil de Siloé—?

I know.

Some of our best Catholics are—

I know.

In your house, do your father and mother keep the Jewish holidays, the dietary laws of the Jews?

My father says that we are all children of the world at large, thank God—not children of a given Church or creed. He does not keep the prescribed laws, but he respects those who do. He respects all men who adhere to that in which they believe.

Then there was nothing in your training to prevent your kneeling with me here and now, young man!

Nathan said after some thought, My body remained standing but my soul knelt.

They crept back up the steps, stung by blackberry barbs.

I appreciate your guiding me to the cave,
Señor Cure,
said Nathan. Will you accept this small offering for the poor of your parish?

The mountains tawny as lions, their hide like the hide of elephants, their shape like a herd of oxen asleep, and blue light coming up behind them as if a great cool lamp were sending it . . . Tomás brayed in greeting at seeing his friend reappear. This time he brayed exactly fifteen times; Nathan counted—
aww, eeeh, aww—
fifteen times, and the most that Tomás had ever brayed was seventeen.

Can I reach the next village before dark?

No, no, no, my son, you’ll be an hour short; and it is death to wander in the blackness of these mountains when you do not know the path. I have a bed to spare, but it is now given over to a Carthusian who broke his leg while crossing the hills, and some shepherds found him and brought him to me. Juan Solivellas takes travelers into his house. Go past the church ramp, then turn right at the first street beyond. His house is on the seventh step below; go with care on that old Moorish ramp: the cobble stones are in bad condition, the sewer is broken in. A red gate leads to his courtyard; and you’ll see the stable beyond the well, and the house itself is on the left. You may smell the olive oil before you get there, the women may be cooking
churos.

...In Andersonville there were no
churos,
no paste squeezed in long tubular sections, swirling in steaming oil, stirred round and round into concentric patterns with a hot smooth stick, giggled at by naughty boys who made the obvious jokes about their appearance . . . lifted from olives’ fat at last, to drain and dry. O joy and warmth and crispness—joy of fat and brownness, joy of taste, taste, taste as your teeth went through and your tongue played and your soul sprang out to thank the beaming cooks.

The life of Nathan Dreyfoos had been rich as olive oil, rich as golden circlets manufactured therein. It grieved him that other men might not possess the variation of a past to comfort them. He felt that (except in cases of the very young) it was the people of enforced limitation who went down quickest. Had Evatt known nothing except a brindled cow, a milking stool, a street with elms? These were not to be had in Andersonville. They were not to be had in the army either; but it was one thing to live as a human, to march and contend as a human with other proud humans beside you; and it was another thing to be a black starved worm among black starved worms. Had Percival known nothing except a lexicon and a row of students? Had Hank known nothing except receding water and the clams he dug upon the flats? . . . Ah, the prisoners bent, they faded, they crawled—ah, they ceased their crawling, began to caterwaul; soon came the cessation of their cry. Even in the oven of this August, Nathan felt himself invulnerable. He could not be drained, cooked, panicked. Always there bloomed stanch memory of various beauties. Far away, but beauties still. The fence was fifteen feet high, the imagined mountains taller.

 XL 

E
ric Torrosian said, My mind’s made up.

His friend Malachi Plover said, I wouldn’t try it.

But I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to try it.

Hell of a way to flank out. I couldn’t never do it. I’d get a gripe in my insides and just whoop them up.

Eric Torrosian had worked with his father up and down the city of New York, carrying bundles of rugs and trying to sell them from house to house. His mother, who was a German, insisted that he should attend school instead; and she and her Armenian husband engaged in conflicts over the matter and supported a grinding persistent feud between them. Sometimes the mother triumphed: Eric was sent to sit behind a desk at Mr. Gottfried Ringel’s day school where the rooms were always too cold in winter and too hot in summer, and where the washroom smelled like poison. For such instruction as was awarded her son, Mrs. Torrosian had to pay two dollars per month. The father beat the air with his hands and wailed that the price was exorbitant. But Anna wanted her son to be a lawyer and this was the first step.

Eric didn’t get to take more than the first step. His father managed to remove him from school periodically on various pretexts, and finally had sufficient excuse for a permanent cessation of Eric’s school days. Henry Torrosian slipped on a flight of icy steps and rolled all the way to the bottom, not well cushioned by his pack of rugs. After that he was unable to carry bundles, and Eric had to go along as pack-horse, else there would have been nothing for them to eat. Eric pleaded with his father to get a pushcart, but the old man demanded, How would I get a pushcart up and down stairs?

You could leave the cart, and carry up one rug at a time to customers.

And have my stock stolen? You are a devil.

No, Father. You could get a little boy. You could give him a dime to watch the cart and keep thieves away.

You are a lazy devil. So I’ve got that many dimes? Come along with you, and mind you don’t crush that packet of new laces.

This went on until Eric was sixteen, nearly seventeen, and one day he was walking alone on Broadway, on his way to pick up an express package, and he was attracted by a sign stating the large bounty offered to men who would enlist in the newest regiment being raised. He went into the tobacco store which served as recruiting headquarters, with two desks and a flag and a brilliantly-uniformed captain and an almost-as-brilliantly-uniformed sergeant and a not-too-brilliantly-uniformed pair of privates, accompanied by several neighborhood idlers who were not enlistees: they said that they were merely chewing the fat. One was a bearded old doctor whose hands shivered with palsy; but he guided Eric Torrosian into the back room among tobacco kegs and told him to take off his shirt. He pounded Eric’s thin chest and cupped his hairy ear against Eric’s ribs, listening. Also he whispered that Eric must unbutton his pants; he would see if he had any visible symptoms of syphilis. The entire examination took about three minutes, though they told him that a surgeon would look him over later. The old doctor, or so he claimed to be, begged the boy for a chew of tobacco, and, when he had none to give, the man said that a few cents in currency would be just as welcome; then the doctor could buy his own chew. Eric gave him a three-cent-piece and the doctor thanked him effusively. He propelled the boy into the front room, punching him alternately in the back and in the buttocks as he moved close behind him. He said, Captain O’Connor, I give you my word—a fine specimen of young manhood. A fine, fine specimen. This was the first time anyone had ever called Eric a fine specimen of manhood or even of boyhood, and he was proportionately pleased. He gave his age as eighteen and signed the roll. He was eager for the bounty, but they told him that the money could not be paid until he reported for duty at an uptown armory; that is, the State and Special bounties might be paid then. The National bounty would not be forthcoming until a certain amount of red tape had been untied.

Eric was sent home to get his personal belongings, and was warned to report at the armory not later than seven o’clock that night. Also he was given a ticket good for dinner and supper and breakfast at an eating-house near the armory, and the sergeant presented him with a paper nosegay of red-white-and-blue flowers to put in his button hole. Those soldiers laughed after he was outside, or as he was going out; he heard what they said; they knew well that Eric was not eighteen; in fact, one of them didn’t think that Eric was even sixteen. He guessed his age as fifteen, which infuriated the boy, and made him consider going back inside and giving that soldier a piece of his mind. But he didn’t go.

Instead he picked up the express package and took it home, where his father was mending the fringe on a mottled rug which had been chewed by rats somewhere in transit. Henry Torrosian was sitting cross-legged on the big wide work table shoved against the window to gain light. This alone prevented him from stabbing Eric with his needle when Eric gave the news. Anna burst into dreadful lamentation and cried and prayed in German, and when she could be understood she demanded that Henry go immediately to the recruiters and inform them that Eric was only sixteen, and couldn’t go to the army.

You do that and I’ll run away.

Where would you run to?

I’d walk, I’d catch rides on freight wagons. I’d get a job as a prentice in Philadelphia or Boston or somewheres. You’d never find me.

He spoke the truth, for he had planned to run away if they scotched his military plans.

Ai.
Now by my own son I am deserted. My back is lame, boy. How can I carry carpetings up and down stairways?

Get a cart, get a boy, like I said. Then he played his trump card. He said that he would share his bounties with them. Was it one hundred dollars from the Government, fifty dollars from the State of New York, fifty dollars Special Bounty? Eric was not certain as to the amount but he would give his parents half the accrual.

Soon his father had put on his black beaver hat—he’d worn that same hat ever since Eric could remember, and long before Eric could remember; he mended it himself— Henry put on his black beaver hat and went to bargain for a used pushcart. Anna hung through the window, calling to neighbor women in the four-story building opposite, telling them that her bold son had enlisted and would soon go to fight Rebels; when the war was over he would return—as an officer, most likely—and then he would become a lawyer.

Eventually Eric and thirty-three other recruits were transferred, from the regiment in which they had originally enlisted, to the ranks of the One Hundred and Twentieth New York. Eric was a serious-minded youth with syrupy eyes, a mound of coarse black hair, hollow cheeks and thick, wide lips. No one picked on him because of his youth; firstly, there were many other fifteen- or sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds in the One Hundred and Twentieth New York; secondly, he had grown up in a neighborhood where one must maul or be mauled in a fight, and he had learned aptly several delicate tricks of mayhem. He served with no complaint and liked the life better than life at home, although a cannonade always frightened him, it made him turn sheet-white and shaking; still he trotted along with his musket as the others trotted, grunting and mumbling when he caught enough breath to do so. One day in May it was unbearably hot, and the Virginia woods were afire, and folks said that wounded men were being burned to death in the woods up ahead: if you listened closely you could hear them screaming. Eric listened but he couldn’t hear the shrieks—too many cannon in the distance. What he did observe, however, was a broken tiny farmhouse barely visible through trees on the right, and he made out the remains of a wooden well-curb out in back. Even a ruined well might hold water, and he and Malachi Plover and a big youth named Kennedy discussed the problem in low tones. This task called for one man to climb down into the well, one to pass canteens back and forth, one to remain on guard. On a farm of that kind, a mere wasted shell of a farm, most likely there would be no rope remaining on the windlass or else the windlass wouldn’t work. Every canteen in their company was dry as a bone; the regiment had sprawled in those woods for a long time. Eric Torrosian talked to his sergeant. The sergeant said that he didn’t dare give him any Hitch Up And Go Ahead; their orders were to remain where they were, until ordered to move forward or back; but the sergeant guessed that the One Hundred and Twentieth would be lying right there on their lame asses the rest of that day. He handed over his own canteen to Eric and so did others. The sergeant turned his back and pretended not to witness their departure.

There were a few bullets whining through the forest from time to time and whacking into trees, and a few men in the regiment had been hit by this overflow of fire, so the boys kept low. Malachi and Eric left their muskets and other equipment behind; they were bedecked with canteens until they could barely crawl, and they wondered how they’d ever make the return when those canteens were filled—
if
they were filled. Kennedy crawled behind; they warned him to keep his musket off cock, they didn’t want to be shot. In the shelter of the stripped old cottage and outhouses they scurried to the well, and Eric saw water shining at the bottom. Kennedy found an old wagon tongue lying in the grass, and they employed it as a kind of ladder . . . Eric crawled down, and Malachi passed him the canteens two at a time, dangling from extended straps taken from other canteens. It was cool and wonderful at the bottom of this mossy, slimy shaft; there were frogs and maybe lizards slipping about; the water was muddy as soon as he’d stirred it up, but it was water.

Suddenly in woods nearby a crashing wave of gunfire broke out in a string of sound like Chinese crackers at a celebration, and son of a bitch if you couldn’t hear the Rebs a-hollering. Let’s get, cried Malachi, and his face loomed patched with shadow, an inhuman face as he bent over the well-curbing. A piece of the rotten wood broke beneath his weight, and damp dust and splinters and punk came down all over Eric Torrosian’s upturned face, and fairly blinded him. He wouldn’t bother with those last two canteens— Yes, surely he would; maybe one was
his;
so he wound the straps around his neck and went pawing and wrenching up the wagon tongue, trying to shinny up rapidly, tearing his clothes as he went. His left eye pained him, and it had dust in it and it stung and watered. When he got to the top and tumbled out on the ground the other canteens were lying there, just the way Plover had dumped them when he took flight. Malachi Plover was halfway to the fence, but he was looking back as he ran, and he beckoned wildly at Eric when the boy appeared. Kennedy was a couple of rods ahead of Plover, and Eric saw him turn, halt, lift his gun and fire, and he heard the ball tear the air past him. There was a loud
bum, bum, bum
of answering fire from the other side of the little farm. By this time Eric had dropped to the ground and so had Plover. They both saw Kennedy: he threw his arms out widely—his musket flew one way, something else from his right hand flew in the other direction, and he seemed to jump high and fall backward as if the wind had been knocked out of him by a boxer’s blow. Back among trees the flags of the One Hundred and Twentieth were being hastened to safety, and the entire regiment was seeking safety too; the boys couldn’t see hide nor hair of anybody, except for those bobbing wads of Colors. (When the regimental Colors were presented, they were presented by a rather pretty spinster sister of one of the field officers who said charmingly, These Colors are warranted not to run! Hah. Eric thought of her now—straw bonnet and black lace mitts and all.)

He stood up and held up his hands, for Rebels were all around him. A tall fellow with seasoned sunburnt face pointed to the doorway with a revolver in his hand and said, Yank, go over and set down on that stoop. Go on, youngster, move—move e’er I put a chunk of lead through you! So Eric went to the step of the ruined house and sat down. Presently an armed soldier brought Malachi Plover to sit beside him, and Malachi said that Kennedy was dead, stone dead. He had been pierced by at least five bullets. Malachi gave the news stupidly, and Eric received the news just as stupidly. They sat and looked at grassy ground before them, and now and then stole glances at the Rebels who guarded them. It seemed odd to see gray and tan and brownish dust-colored figures standing erect so close at hand. The only ones they’d seen previously, close at hand, had been lying mute.