Had he wanted to make things easier for his son? Or for the boy’s mother? Or for himself? Was he secretly glad that his son was gone and he could get back to work?

  The jeeps drove across the open square and parked in front of the church, with engines idling and headlights on. The officer and the comandante shouted orders, and the soldiers started busying themselves inside the church. The German walked across the square and past the tower, and discovered a two-room addition, also gutted, at the rear, and stairs leading from behind the chancel down the slope. It was too dark for him to see where they went. He stood there gazing at the stairs. Now and then a cry came up from below, like the cry of a bird in a dream. Then the officer called for him.

  He turned around and started back. Only now did he notice someone crouching next to the top step. It startled him, and he felt as if he was being watched, spied on. He couldn’t tell if the figure in a dark poncho was a man or a woman. Without looking up, the figure said something he didn’t understand. He asked the figure to repeat what it had said, and it spoke again, but he couldn’t even make out if what it said was a repetition or something else. The officer called for him again.

  By the light of the headlights the soldiers were busy in the church, piling up charred wood from the roof, pews, and confessionals, and clearing an area around the altar in the chancel. The officer and comandante were nowhere in sight. The Canadian was sitting on the stone threshold to the tower, his thin silver flask in his hand.

  “Come here,” the Canadian called, waving the hand holding the flask.

  The German sat down, took a swig, and rolled it around in his mouth till it burned.

  “Can you tell me why they brought sleeping bags and food along if we were supposed to sleep at the monastery?” the Canadian asked. “What they’re doing is building a fire to cook on and setting up camp in the chancel.”

  He swallowed the whiskey and took another swig. “For emergencies. They knew what the road is like and that we might run into an emergency.”

  “They knew what the road is like? And all the same they decided to take us over the mountains by jeep, instead of by helicopter?”

  “I’ve never been in a helicopter.”

  “Ro-to-to-to,” the Canadian went and waved the flask in circles around his head. He was drunk. Then they heard two shots and then, a heartbeat later, a third. “That was the comandante. At least it was his pistol. Do you have one with you?”

  “A pistol?”

  The comandante and the officer emerged out of the darkness. “What were you shooting at?” the Canadian called out to them as they approached.

  “He thought he heard a rattlesnake.” The comandante nodded his head toward the officer. “But there aren’t any around here. No need to worry.”

  5

  WHILE THEY ATE, the Canadian started in on the comandante. He had been the one who fired the gun, not the officer, so why was he denying it? After a while the officer began to make fun of the ingeniero. So, he had been able to tell that the shots were from a Tokarev. So, he knew what a Tokarev sounded like, and a Makarov and a Browning and a Beretta. Wasn’t that amazing? That he of all people was so good at recognizing gunshots? That he knew so much about guns? He of all people.

  The Canadian cast him a questioning look.

  “After all, you left America for Canada back then, because you didn’t want to have anything to do with guns, didn’t you?”

  “So?”

  The officer laughed and slapped his thigh.

  When the fire had burned down and they were lying in their sleeping bags, the German gazed up at the sky through what was left of the roof timbers. He was once again overwhelmed by the panoply of stars. He looked for some moving light that he could follow again with his eyes. But he found none.

  A real father fights for his son. He battles for him. Or he flees with him. But he doesn’t sit there and shrug. He doesn’t watch with a stupid grin on his face while someone takes his son away from him.

  Other similarly shameful scenes came back to him. A dinner with some older colleagues who rejected him and whom he despised but tried to win over all the same. That evening with his wife and her parents, when her father made it obvious that he would have preferred a different husband for his daughter, and he had sat there smiling politely. The dancing class where he had danced the last dance with the prettiest girl and was therefore entitled to walk her home, but could only grin and bear it when another boy, one of the bigger, stronger ones, snatched her away from him with a laugh.

  His face was burning. He could barely stand the shame. Memories of his failures in life, of frustrated plans, of hopes now dead—nothing was as physical as shame. It was as if he wanted to get away from himself but couldn’t, as if he were tugging and tearing himself apart. As if it were ripping him in two. Yes, he thought, that’s what shame is. The physical sense of being torn in half, because you are or were only half-hearted. One half of me despised those colleagues, while the other was trying to win them over. I half hated my father-in-law and tore myself in half for my wife’s sake, and I wanted that pretty girl, but not with my whole heart, not with all my courage. And I was only half a father to my son.

  He fell asleep. When he awoke his mind was instantly totally clear. He sat up and listened into the darkness. He wanted to know what had awakened him. But the night was silent. He heard only the cry of a bird and a rustling sound, like wind through dead leaves. Suddenly the jeep parked outside the church door burst into flames with a loud pop. Before the German could creep out of his sleeping bag, the officer was dashing through the door, out onto the square, making for another jeep beside the one already burning. He released the brake and pushed. The German ran after him and helped. It was scorching hot beside the raging fire, he thought the flames would jump across at any moment. But together they managed it. The two other jeeps were parked at a safe distance.

  “Didn’t you . . .”

  “Yes, I posted a guard at the door.” The officer pulled the German back into the church. The chancel was empty. The others were standing to one side of the entrance, where the flames didn’t illuminate the church’s interior. No one said a word until the fire died out. Then the officer and the comandante whispered orders, and the men vanished into the darkness of night.

  “We’re climbing the tower. You go to the chancel. Here, profesor, take my pistol.” The officer gave the German his gun. Then he and the comandante were gone, too.

  The Canadian held the German back. “Tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, we’ll grab us a jeep and two of the boys and head back. If they don’t want us to get to that stupid town, that’s fine by me. I didn’t go to Canada instead of Vietnam so that I could end up being killed here.”

  “But . . .”

  “Where’s your head? They don’t want us. They haven’t killed us, although they could have, because they’re being polite. But they’re serious, and if we don’t respond politely to their politeness, they’ll stop being polite.”

  “Who are they?”

  “How should I know? And I don’t care, either.”

  The German hesitated. “But haven’t we been assigned—”

  “—the job of bringing peace to the country? Aren’t we two of the twelve apostles of peace?” The Canadian laughed. “Don’t you get it? It’s like the president said: If the combatants are doing too well, there’s no making peace with them. It’s like with alcohol. Until an alcoholic has fallen so far, so deep that he can’t go any deeper, he won’t stop drinking.” He pulled the flask from his pocket. “Cheers!”

  6

  EVEN THOUGH he was freezing, the German fell asleep. When he woke up, his arms and legs stiff, morning was breaking. He sat up and on his left he saw two jeeps parked nicely side by side and the other one stranded in the middle of the square. He hadn’t realized they had pushed it so far last night. Fog was clinging to the trees on the slope beyond the square. The light was gray, but it still hurt his eyes.

  He heard noises. Metal ringing against stone, over and over, and earth falling on earth with a plump smack. Were the drivers digging a grave? The sun rose, a pale yellow ball.

  The ringing spades reminded him of a vacation at the shore and the sandcastle he had built with his son, because all fathers build sandcastles with their sons and his son wanted the father all sons have and to do the things with him that they all do with their fathers. At the same time his son had wanted a special sandcastle, one to brag about. But none of the schoolmates or playmates he could have bragged to were there, and despite all the work father and son put into it, it didn’t accomplish its goal. They didn’t accomplish their goal on a mountain hike a couple of years later, either. They didn’t get as far as they had wanted—or that he had assumed they needed to get for him to show his son the joy of mastering a challenge. He thought of other situations where he had failed, demanded instead of praised, scolded instead of comforted, drawn away instead of getting involved. They moved through his memory like a distant train moving across his field of vision. A train he should have boarded, but that had long since left the station.

  He felt weak, he leaned against the base of a column and looked at the sun. His teeth were chattering. As if the sun were just hanging up there, he thought. He was seized by the fear it might fall. Would it strike the earth, burn everything up or vaporize it with a hiss as it struck? Or would it fall into the void behind the earth?

  He knew this was nonsense, and he knew that he was thinking nonsense because he was feverish. That there was no reason for the fear moving up through his body like the cold. It wasn’t so cold, nor was there all that much reason for fear. He didn’t need to worry about his son being born handicapped, ending up taking drugs, failing school, being chronically depressed, not graduating from college, not finding a wife. It had all gone well, even if none of it was his own doing. Even if he hadn’t contributed what he ought to have contributed. Even if he still owed his contribution. Even if he had not paid his debt.

  The sound of digging stopped. All the German heard was his own teeth chattering. He had to decide whether he wanted to go back with or even without the Canadian or drive on with the officer and comandante. He didn’t want to risk his life. His son would soon need him to be a loving, kindly, generous grandfather. Soon—but out there the jeeps were being loaded, the officer and the comandante would presumably be taking their seats in the first jeep, assigning the second one to the Canadian and the third to him; maybe the Canadian would climb aboard, flask in hand, and they would all expect him not to gum up the works and make this difficult trip even more difficult. He had to decide. All the same, without bracing himself against the column, he would hardly be able to stand.

  He had no idea where the Canadian, the officer, and the comandante suddenly appeared from. They were standing at the entrance to the church.

  “Our orders are to bring you to the town, and we’re going to bring you to the town.”

  “Your orders are to bring us safely to the town. But whoever killed the guard last night and set the jeep on fire is going to blow us up somewhere down the road. Boom.”

  “What did you expect? That you were going to take a little drive in the country? For a picnic?” The comandante was furious.

  The officer was more placating. “Whoever did that last night—that he came at night but didn’t show himself yesterday means that he’s too weak to show himself by day.”

  The German stood up and stepped outside the church. He was shivering, and his body ached. To the right of the church the drivers had dug a grave. To one side of it, the folding spades had been thrust into the mound of earth. On the other side lay two bodies. The German recognized the man who had been his driver yesterday, the throat gaping and bloody. Beside him lay a woman with several bullet holes in her chest. The German had never seen a corpse before. It didn’t make him sick to his stomach, he wasn’t shocked. Dead people simply looked dead. Was the woman the figure who had been sitting at the top of the stairs? Why had the officer or the comandante shot her? By mistake? Out of nervousness?

  Two drivers appeared, laid the corpses into the grave, shoveled it full, and patted the earth with their spades. No cross, he thought, but then he saw one of the drivers tying two wooden sticks together to make one.

  The others loaded baggage, sleeping bags, and supplies into the jeeps. The Canadian was trying to talk to the officer—who paid him no attention and kept walking around. The Canadian ran alongside trying to buttonhole him, but to no avail. The comandante was already sitting in the jeep.

  Giving up on the officer, the Canadian glanced at the German and crossed over to him. “They won’t drive us back.” Then he noticed the German’s jacket, heavy with the weight of the pistol the officer had given him during the night and that the German had tucked into his pocket. He grabbed it before the German realized what he was reaching for. He ran over to the officer, thrust out his chest, and waved the gun.

  7

  THEN EVERYTHING happened so quickly—the movements, the cries, the shots—that the German understood none of it. That was his first thought when he realized he had been hit: I’ll never know what happened.

  A book came to mind, a book in which a man described his heart attack, beads of sweat on his forehead and sweaty palms, a searing flash in his lungs, an ache in his left arm, pains in his chest, welling up and diminishing like a cramp, fear. Just like that, he had thought at the time, that’s how the assault on his own life would be. But he felt no searing flash, no ache, no pain, no fear. His chest felt full, as if a bubble of warm liquid had burst in there and was running out inside him.

  The shooting was over. The comandante shouted orders, a couple of men ran to the jeeps, others to the officer and the Canadian, who had sunk to the ground. The German couldn’t tell how seriously the man was wounded. For a moment he thought he should do something about it, but was immediately aware of what an absurd idea that was. He wanted to be alone. He put one foot in front of the other and groped along, bracing himself against the wall of the church with his right hand. He wanted to make it to the stairs.

  The pale yellow sun was still hanging there, but a little higher now. He saw that the slope that fell away behind the church was covered with chest-high brush and grass. That slope and the next and the next. Here and there a palm tree towered with its feather-dusty crown. The land was bleak, inhospitable, hostile. A cold breeze came up; it moved through the tall grass covering the hills. It looks like wind moving over water, he thought.

  Then he thought of the debt he hadn’t paid. Would his son have to make good on it for him? Would the bill be presented to him? Or was the meaning of his death that he was making good on his debt? That the bill wouldn’t be presented to his son? That his son would not have to pay for his happiness?

  He was cheerful for a brief moment. Ah, he said to himself, it’s not too late, it’s not too late to love my son. Maybe he’s coming up those stairs right now? And even if it’s only a vision—how beautiful it would be to see him coming up the stairs now, in his doctor’s smock and stethoscope, dressed as I’ve never seen him, or in those same old jeans and that same old blue sweater, or as a little boy, running, laughing, out of breath.

  Out of breath? Where had the warmth in his chest gone? Why were his legs, which had just been supporting him, no longer doing so? Before he could sit down on the stairs his legs buckled under him and he collapsed on the flagstones that connected with the top step. He was lying on his left side and saw dried blood, grass growing between the flagstones, and a beetle. He wanted to pull himself up, crawl to the stairs, and sit down on the top step. He wanted to sit there in such a way that if he died he would crumple up but stay sitting. He wanted to sit there so that if he died he would be looking out across the land and the land would be looking at him, sitting upright on the top step and dying.

  He would never find out why he was being so vain in death—although no one was there, no one to see him, be impressed or disappointed by him. He could have found out if he had thought about it. But he would have had to think longer than he had time left. He didn’t manage to pull himself up. He lay there on the ground, felt the cold wind, but could no longer see it moving through the grass. He would have liked to see those tousled, feather-dusty palms again, too. They reminded him of something; maybe he would think of it if he could see them again.

  He realized he had only a few moments left. One moment to think about his mother, one moment for the women in his life, one moment for . . . His son did not come up the stairs. It had been too late after all. He was sad that at the last moment the movie of his life did not unreel before him. He would have liked to see it. He would have liked to do nothing, just relax and watch. Instead he had to think until the very last moment. The movie—why didn’t death do what people promised it would? But then he was too tired to have wanted to see the movie anyway.

  THE WOMAN AT THE GAS STATION

  1

  HE NO LONGER knew if he had actually dreamt his dream at one time or had only been fantasizing about it from the start. He also didn’t know what image, what story, or what film had triggered it. It must have been when he was fifteen or sixteen—the dream had stayed with him that long now. Back then, he would fantasize about it if a class in school or a day on vacation with his parents was too boring, later it might happen in a business meeting or on a train—when he was tired and had put his reports away, he would lay his head back and close his eyes.

  He had told his dream a few times to one friend or another, and to a woman whom, years after their love affair and separation, he had encountered by chance in another city and idled the day away with, strolling and chatting. It wasn’t that he would have wanted to keep his dream secret. There weren’t many occasions to talk about it. Besides, he didn’t know why the dream had stayed with him. He knew that it betrayed something about him, but not what, and it was unpleasant to think that someone else might be able to see it.