Going After Cacciato (20 page)

At the rear of the column, last of thirty-nine, Private First Class
Paul Berlin felt the full labor of the march. He did not think about the mountains, or the coming battle, or what might happen there. He watched the road pass beneath his boots, the way the boots appeared and reappeared, the strain mostly in his hips. The road was very dry. It did not kick up dust as he climbed. Solid like summer cement. He did not want to think. The upward climb took energy from his thoughts and sent it to his legs and hips and back, and he climbed without thinking, just climbed, just kept climbing, but then he felt himself slipping. It happened first on the climb to the mountains, slipping out of himself, and, still climbing, he looked up at the summit of the small mountain, climbing but also slipping quietly out of himself, looked up to see the blond-headed lieutenant looking down.

Lieutenant Sidney Martin stood alone. His arms were folded as he watched the ascension of his men. He wore his shirt. It was dark under the armpits and at the hollow of his back, and the sleeves were rolled up over his elbows. In profile, his face was young; straight on, it was not so young. His lips moved as he counted to himself the number of soldiers still climbing. He counted to twenty-one, plus the scout.

His sergeants came to him, and they too wore their shirts. The sergeants conferred, then one of them faced west and took out the binoculars and surveyed the higher mountains where the battle would be. The sergeant with the binoculars then turned and spoke to the blond-headed lieutenant, who nodded but did not answer, then the sergeants left him and the lieutenant stood alone and watched his men climb. Once he looked west. The green of the mountains was splendid. Many shades of green, and colors not quite green but influenced by it, and the greens gave the impression, which the lieutenant knew to be false, of great coolness and removal and peace. He saw no signs of the battle. He knew he would hear the battle before he saw it, but he knew he would not hear it for many hours. He knew he must conserve the strength of his men for the fighting. He also knew he must get his men to the fighting before it ended. He had many problems to consider:
whether to stay on the road, with its danger of land mines but with its advantage of speed, or whether to move instead through the rough country, with less danger but with less speed. He had the problem of the heat. He had the problem of sending tired men into the battle. He had other problems, too, but he was a leader, working through his sergeants according to the old rules of command. This kept his sergeants happy, and it would eventually build respect for him among the men and boys. The lieutenant had been trained in common sense and military strategy. He had read Thucydides and von Clausewitz, and he considered war a means to ends, with a potential for both good and bad, but his interest was in effectiveness and not goodness. A soldier’s interest is in means, not ends. So the young lieutenant prided himself on his knowledge of tactics and strategy and history, his fluency in German and Spanish, his West Point training, his ability to maximize a unit’s potential. He believed in mission. He believed in men, too, but he believed in mission first. He hoped that someday the men would come to understand this; that effectiveness requires an emphasis on mission over men, and that in war it is necessary to make hard sacrifices. He hoped the men would someday understand why it was required that they search tunnels before blowing them, and why they must march to the mountains without rest. He hoped for this understanding, but he did not worry about it. He did not coddle the men or seek their friendship. And he did not try to fool them. Before starting the march, he had told them that he cared for their lives and would not squander them, but he also explained that he cared for the mission as a soldier must, otherwise every life lost is lost dumbly. He told the platoon he would not tolerate malingering on the march, even though the day was hot. “We will be soldiers,” he told them, “and we will march steadily, and we will not be late for the battle. Any man who falls out will be left where he falls, even if it’s sunstroke.” The men hadn’t cheered his speech, but this did not matter to the young lieutenant.

Standing bare-headed at the summit, Sidney Martin decided to stay on the road. He spoke the decision as a declarative sentence,
saying, “We’ll stay to the road until I hear the battle,” and when the decision was spoken he did not think about it again. Instead he looked up for clouds, hoping they would come to break the sun, but the sky was clear and unmoving. All over, the country was baked still. The lieutenant folded his arms. He watched the remaining soldiers come up the road, counting them as they reached the top and moved off along the plateau toward the higher mountains.

On the road and still climbing, Private First Class Paul Berlin easily slipped back into himself, not losing a step. He was comfortable in his climbing, motion corresponding to the passage of time, a sense of continuity and purpose. He walked with his head down, bent forward to balance his rucksack an inch or so below the neck, at the top of the spine, distributing the weight evenly and high and transferring it to his legs and from his legs to the upward-going road. He did not think. Above him, he saw the blond-headed lieutenant standing with folded arms. The lieutenant’s belt buckle sparkled and his lips seemed to move as if talking to himself, or as if counting, but counting what, or why? Private First Class Paul Berlin did not know. He knew the road. He knew the pull at his back, and the feel of the black rifle in his hands, and the weight of his gear, and the heat.

There were no villages along the road. It was not farming country, nor was it jungle. It was the country that connects the paddies to the jungle; poor, beautiful country. The grass grew thick and uncut, no wind to brush it, and the only motion was the steady marching of the thirty-eight soldiers and the scout, a boy of thirteen. Paul Berlin did not think. The march connected him to the road, and the climb was everything. An anatomy lesson, the feel of the tendons stretching, the muscles and fluids and tissues moving like a machine. He would climb until the machine stopped. And when the time came he would stop the way a machine stops, just stopping. He would simply stop, rest, tumble. He wiped his sweaty forehead with his sweaty forearm. When the time came, he told himself, he would stop. Slipping again …

The blond-headed lieutenant watched him climb. Though he
did not know the soldier’s name, this did not matter much, for the soldiers whose names he did not know he simply called Soldier or Trooper, whichever came to him first, and there was nothing impersonal or degrading about either word. He watched the boy’s strange mechanical walk, the lazy obscurity of each step, the ploddingness, and he felt both sadness and pride. He saw the boy as a soldier. Maybe not yet a good soldier, but still a soldier. He saw him as part of a whole, as one of many soldiers pressed together by the force of mission. The lieutenant was not stupid. He knew these beliefs were unpopular. He knew that his society, and many of the men under his own command, did not share them. But he did not ask his men to share his views, only to comport themselves like soldiers. So watching Paul Berlin’s dogged climb, its steadiness and persistence, the lieutenant felt great admiration for the boy, admiration and love combined. He secretly urged him on. For the sake of mission, yes, and for the welfare of the platoon. But also for the boy’s own well-being, so that he might feel the imperative to join the battle and to win it.

The lieutenant did not enjoy fighting battles. Neither bloodthirsty nor bloodshy, he had not enjoyed the few battles of his career, nor the feeling that had come to his stomach when the fighting ended. But the battles had to be fought.

Watching the boy come up the road, the lieutenant was struck by a sense of great urgency and great pride. He was young, yes, but he was a serious man. Pride, for the lieutenant, was strength of will. And watching his platoon, watching the boy climb, the lieutenant now felt very proud. Though they did not know it, and never would, he loved these men. Even those whose names he did not know, even Paul Berlin, who walked last in the column—he loved them all.

But he was not stupid. He knew something was wrong with his war. The absence of a common purpose. He would rather have fought his battles in France or at Hastings or Austerlitz. He would rather have fought at St. Vith. But the lieutenant knew that in war purpose is never paramount, neither purpose nor cause, and that
battles are always fought among human beings, not purposes. He could not imagine dying for a purpose. Death was its own purpose, no qualification or restraint. He did not celebrate war. He did not believe in glory. But he recognized the enduring appeal of battle: the chance to confront death many times, as often as there were battles. Secretly the lieutenant believed that war had been invented for just that reason—so that through repetition men might try to do better, so that lessons might be learned and applied the next time, so that men might not be robbed of their own deaths. In this sense alone, Sidney Martin believed in war as a means to ends. A means of confronting ending itself, many repeated endings. He was a modest, thoughtful man. He was quiet. He had blue eyes and fine blond hair and strong teeth. He was a professional soldier, but unlike other professionals he believed that the overriding mission was the inner mission, the mission of every man to learn the important things about himself. He did not say these things to other officers. He did not say them to anyone. But he believed them. He believed that the mission to the mountains, important in itself, was even more important as a reflection of a man’s personal duty to exercise his full capacities of courage and endurance and willpower.

Still on the red road, now three-quarters of the way to the top, Private First Class Paul Berlin did not have the lieutenant’s advantages of perspective and overview. Marching automatically, he had the single advantage of hard labor. He felt strong. He felt the muscles working in his thighs and stomach. He did not think about the mountains or the coming battle. For a time he did not think about anything—just the effortless coordination of the march. It was easy. And when the time came, when he made the decision, he would simply stop. But for now his legs kept climbing. He watched the road. He saw its color mottled by age and weathering. He watched the unmoving grass. He saw Stink Harris remove a belt of machine-gun ammunition and throw it into the weeds, then walk faster. He saw Cacciato using his rifle as a walking stick, muzzle down. He saw the shiny sweat like polish on the bare backs of Eddie Lazzutti and Pederson and Vaught, and the slow unfolding of events as the
platoon moved up, the oddities of men close to the ground and weighted by gravity, foot soldiers with feet hardened, and the red road. Above him, he saw the blond-headed lieutenant standing alone and watching. “If we fight well,” Sidney Martin had said before the march, “fewer men will be killed than if we fight poorly.” Private First Class Paul Berlin had not analyzed that statement, but he knew it was both true and dangerous. He knew he would not fight well. He had no love of mission, no love strong enough to make himself fight well, and, though he wanted now to stop, he was amazed at the way his legs kept moving beneath him. Paul Berlin, who had no desire to confront death until he was old and feeble, and who believed firmly that he could not survive a true battle in the mountains, marched up the road knowing he would not fight well, knowing it certainly, but still climbing, one step then the next, climbing, seeing each thing separately, a wildflower with white blossoms, a pebble rolling, always climbing, as if drawn along by some physical force—inertia or herd affinity or magnetic attraction. He marched up the road with no exercise of will, no desire and no determination, no pride, just legs and lungs, climbing without thought and without will and without purpose. He felt no drama. He felt a curious quiet. He felt he could stop at any moment, whenever the time came, whenever he told himself to quit. Then he decided. It came first as a dreamy, impossible idea, but then it hardened into a firm decision, and he told himself that now was the time. He would stop. He decided it: He would let his knees collapse, go limp all over, just toppling and rolling to whatever spot he came to and not moving again. He would simply fall. He would lie very still and watch the sky and then perhaps sleep, perhaps later dig out the Coke stored in his pack, drink it, then sleep again. All this was decided. But the decision did not reach his legs. The decision was made, but it did not flow down to his legs, which kept climbing the red road. Powerless and powerful, like a boulder in an avalanche, Private First Class Paul Berlin marched toward the mountains without stop or the ability to stop.

Lieutenant Sidney Martin watched him come. He admired the
oxen persistence with which the last soldier in the column of thirty-nine marched, thinking that the boy represented so much good—fortitude, discipline, loyalty, self-control, courage, toughness. The greatest gift of God, thought the lieutenant in admiration of Private First Class Paul Berlin’s climb, is freedom of will.

Sidney Martin, not a man of emotion, raised a hand to hail the boy.

But Paul Berlin had no sense of the lieutenant’s sentiment. His eyes were down and he climbed the road dumbly. His steps matched his thoughts. He did not notice the heat, or the beauty of the country, or the lieutenant’s raised hand. If he had noticed, he would not have understood. He was dull of mind, blunt of spirit, numb of history, and struck with wonder that he could not stop climbing the red road toward the mountains.

T
he time in Delhi was a good time. Cacciato did not show himself, and, except for a once-a-day stop at police headquarters, they did not waste much time looking. The days were hot. The evenings were warm. Eddie Lazzutti spent the afternoons in an air-conditioned movie theater across from the hotel. Oscar and Stink sampled
nua dem
houses in the new city, Doc Peret found a kiosk that sold American magazines, and the lieutenant, whose health seemed to be returning, spent his time with Jolly Chand, sometimes going off for day-long trips to the country, sometimes just sitting in the Phoenix courtyard, where they talked in low voices.