Blood and Iron (55 page)

But when days were slow, he had too much time to sit in his brand-new office and think. On days like that, he welcomed visitors not so much for the sake of the business they might bring as for their distraction value.

And so, now, he was happy to set a cigarette in the brass ashtray on his desk and greet the skinny man in the faded, shiny suit of prewar cut who came through the door and said, “Mr. Moss, is it?”

“That’s right.” Moss’ swivel chair squeaked as he rose from it. He stuck out his hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr.—?”

“My name is Smith. John Smith.” The skinny man sighed. “Save the question, sir: yes, that really is my name. I can prove it if I have to. There are a lot of Smiths, and my father and his father were both Johns, so…” He sighed again. “It’s almost as much trouble as being named something like Cyrus Mudpuddle, or I think it must be, anyhow.”

“You’re likely right, Mr. Smith,” said Moss, who’d taken his share of ribbing about his name over the years. “Why don’t you sit down, have a smoke if you care to, and tell me what you think I can do for you.” He glanced at that shabby suit again. “No fee for the first consultation.” Smith was hungrier than he.

“Thank you, sir. You’re very kind.” Smith sat, then made a show of patting his pockets. “Oh, dear, I seem to have left my cigarettes at home.”

“Have one of mine.” Moss extended the pack. He’d half expected something like this. He lit a match for Smith, wondering whether he’d ever see any money from the man if he undertook to represent him. After the Canadian had taken a couple of drags, Moss repeated, “What can I do for you?”

For a moment, he didn’t know if he’d get an answer. John Smith seemed entranced with pleasure at the tobacco smoke. Moss wondered how long he’d gone without. After a few seconds, though, Smith seemed to recall he hadn’t come into the office just to cadge a smoke. He said, “I wish your assistance, sir, in helping me regain a piece of property taken from me without good reason.”

“Very well.” A lot of Moss’ business was of that sort. He slid a pad toward himself and took a fountain pen from the middle drawer of his desk. “First, the basics: did you serve in the Canadian Army during the Great War?”

“No, sir,” Smith said. “I am badly ruptured, I’m afraid, and was not fit for duty. I have a doctor’s certificate.”

“Good enough.” Moss scribbled a note. “Next obvious question: have you taken the oath of loyalty to the occupation authorities?”

“Yes, I did that—did it not long after the war ended, as soon as I had the chance,” Smith answered. “I am a peaceable man. I would not tell you a falsehood and say I am glad your country won the war—you
are
an American, I take it?” He waited for Moss to nod, then went on, “Because I am a peaceable man, all I can do is make the best of things as I find them.”

“That’s sensible, Mr. Smith.” Moss noted he’d taken the oath. “All right. I may be able to help you. If you’d answered
no
to either of those questions, I couldn’t possibly, and neither could any lawyer. Some would take your money and tell you they could work miracles, but they’d be lying. I make no promises yet, you understand, but you do meet the minimum criteria for pursuing a claim. Now—what piece of property are we talking about?”

Smith coughed apologetically. “This one, sir.”

“What?” Moss stared.

“This one, sir.” John Smith looked even more embarrassed. “Before the war, sir, my house stood right about”—he pronounced it
aboat
, as a Canadian would—“here, instead of this fine big building where you have your office.”

“You want me to help you make me move out of my office?” Moss had judged Smith a man without any nerve. Now he revised his opinion. If that wasn’t gall, Julius Caesar had never seen any.

With or without nerve, Smith remained a quiet, apologetic fellow. “It’s not so much that I want to, sir,” he said, “but this property was—is—almost the only thing I own. I’ve not had an easy time of it since…since the war.” Maybe he’d been on the point of saying something on the order of,
Since you Yankee robbers came up here.
But maybe not, too. Maybe he’d just stumbled over a word. He seemed the type to do a good deal of that.

Jonathan Moss started to laugh. He quickly held up a hand. “I’m not laughing at you, Mr. Smith—really, I’m not,” he said. “But this is absurd, and I don’t think you can argue with me there.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Smith said, and Moss believed him. The Canadian got to his feet. “I am sorry to have troubled you.”

“Don’t go away!” Moss sprang to his feet, too, quick as if he’d been turning his fighting scout onto the tail of a Sopwith Pup. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take your case. Let me see your documents, Mr. Smith, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“Really?” John Smith’s hangdog expression vanished, to be replaced by astonishment. “But you work here!”

“It’s not like I own the building.” Moss corrected himself: “It’s not like I think I own the building.” He wondered what he would have done in his landlord’s shoes. Probably thrown Smith out so hard he bounced. But the Canuck could always have found another lawyer. Plenty of eager young hotshots had come up from the United States, and some Canadians were also jumping into occupation law.

“I—I don’t know what to say,” Smith told him. “Thank you very much, sir.” He coughed and looked embarrassed again. “I’m also afraid I’ll have some trouble paying you.”

One look at his suit had warned Moss that was likely. The way Smith had “forgotten” his cigarettes warned him it was as near certain as made no difference. He shrugged. “What the hell, Mr. Smith,” he said—not proper legal language, but at the moment he didn’t care. “We’ll see what you can afford. If you can’t afford much, I’ll do it for a lark. I want to see the look on my landlord’s face when I serve him the papers.”

“Oh, that’s good. That’s very good.” For a moment, Smith, who had to be close to fifty, looked about fifteen. “What they call a practical joke, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it just?” Moss leaned forward in his chair. “Now—let’s find out exactly how practical a joke it is. Show me these documents.”

“I haven’t got everything with me, I’m afraid,” Smith said. Moss exhaled through his nose. He hadn’t been practicing long, but he’d already seen that unprepared clients were the bane of an attorney’s life. Blushing, Smith went on, “I left most of the papers I still have back at my flat, because I didn’t really believe you’d be interested in helping me.”

“Show me what you’ve—” Moss stopped. “The papers you still have?” he asked sharply. “What happened to the ones you used to have?”

John Smith showed a touch of temper for the first time. “What do you think happened to them?” he snapped. “You Yanks, that’s what. I stayed in Empire—in Berlin—till the shells started falling. When I got out, it was with the clothes on my back and one carpetbag. You try stuffing your whole life in one carpetbag, sir, and see how well you do.”

Before coming to Berlin, Moss hadn’t thought much about how civilians on the losing side felt about the war. He was getting an education in quiet bitterness. “All right,” he said. “What have you got?”

Smith reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the two documents he’d already mentioned. He’d have needed the doctor’s certificate as he fled the advancing Americans. Without it, the Canadians would have stuck a rifle in his hands and sent him to the trenches, rupture or no rupture. They might have done that anyhow, but he had the paper that said they wouldn’t have. He also had the paper that said he’d made his formal peace with the U.S. occupiers. No Canadian could work without that one.

And he had a photograph of himself—a younger version of himself—standing in front of a clapboard house that bore the same address as this big brick office building. A plain woman in a black dress and a frumpy hat stood beside him. “Your wife?” Moss asked.

“That’s right.” Smith paused, then went on, “Some Yank pilot shot us up as we were leaving—shot up the road, I mean, for the sport of it. He killed my Jane and left me without a scratch—and ever since, I’ve wished it had been the other way round.”

Moss didn’t know what to say to that. He’d shot up refugee columns. It was part of war: it disrupted the enemy. He hadn’t thought much about the consequences of what he did. He resolutely tried not to think about those consequences now.

“Besides this photograph,” he managed at last, “what sort of title can you show to this property? Have you got a deed? Have you got bank records?”

“Haven’t got a deed,” Smith said. “Used to be bank records—in the bank. Isn’t any bank any more. I hear tell Yank soldiers blew the vault open and stole everything inside—everything they wanted, anyway.”

That wouldn’t have surprised Moss. Among other things, armies were enormous robber bands. He said, “You do understand, lacking the proper papers will make your claim much harder to establish.”

“I should hope I understand that,” John Smith said. “If I’d reckoned it would be easy, I’d have tried it myself.”

“All right,” Moss said. “Go through your effects. Whatever you can bring that’s evidence you own this land, I want to see it. No matter how unlikely you think it is, I want to see it. If you know people who can testify they know you owned this land, I want to hear from them. I won’t kid you, though. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

“I’ll do my best,” Smith promised.

When Lucien Galtier saw the green-gray motorcar coming down the road from Rivière-du-Loup toward his farmhouse, he took it for granted at first. He had seen an infinitude of green-gray motorcars and trucks coming down that road, and another infinitude going up it.

Then, after he’d already started turning away, he spun back and stared at the Ford with eyes that wanted to narrow in suspicion and widen in surprise at the same time. He had not seen a green-gray motorcar in some time. The U.S. Army painted its motorcars that color. But the U.S. Army had not occupied the Republic of Quebec since the end of the war—well, since a little after the end of the war.

The Ford pulled off the road and parked beside the farmhouse, as Leonard O’Doull’s automobile more commonly did these days. Lucien sighed and walked toward it. “I might have known,” he muttered under his breath. “A man may think he has escaped troubles, but troubles never escape a man.”

Two men got out of the motorcar. Galtier recognized Bishop Pascal first, more by his vestments than by his own tubby form. His companion, the driver, was whipcord lean and, sure enough, wore U.S. Army uniform. Seeing Lucien approach, he waved.
“Bonjour!”
he called in excellent Parisian French. “It is good to see you once more, M. Galtier.”

“Bonjour…”
As Galtier drew near, he saw that Jedediah Quigley wore eagles on his shoulders, not oak leaves of either gold or silver. He’d been a major when Galtier first made his acquaintance. Now—“
Bonjour,
Colonel Quigley. You have come up in the world since I saw you last.”

“He is the military liaison officer between the United States and the Republic of Quebec,” Bishop Pascal said. Hearing the bishop speak ahead of Colonel Quigley surprised Lucien not at all; Pascal had always found the sound of his own voice sweeter and more intoxicating than communion wine.

“An important man indeed,” Galtier said. “And how and why does a simple farmer deserve a visit from not only the military liaison officer between the United States and the Republic of Quebec but also the illustrious and holy bishop of Rivière-du-Loup?”

Bishop Pascal had no ear for irony. Colonel Quigley did. One of his eyebrows quirked upward. “It is a matter concerning the hospital,” he said.

“What about the hospital?” Galtier demanded, suddenly apprehensive. He saw Marie peering out the kitchen window, no doubt wondering what was going on. He’d been about to ask Quigley and Bishop Pascal to come into the farmhouse so she could serve them tea—or something stronger—and some of the cinnamon buns she’d baked the day before. Now, he was not nearly so sure they were welcome in his house.

“The hospital, of course, is built on land taken from your patrimony,” Bishop Pascal said. The plump bishop always looked out for himself first. He had embraced the Americans with indecent haste. Galtier would not have cared to turn his back on him for an instant. But he did understand the way a Quebecois farmer’s mind worked.

Colonel Quigley, despite having been in Quebec since 1914, didn’t. “And we’ve been paying you a good rent for it, too,” he said gruffly.

“It is my land,” Galtier replied with dignity. “And”—his own eyebrow rose—“for some long stretch of time, you paid not a cent of rent. You simply took it, because you had men with guns.”

“We suspected your loyalty.” Quigley was blunt in a way no Quebecois would have been. “Once we didn’t any more, we paid what we owed you.”

“If you steal land from a man’s patrimony, you are liable to make him disloyal,” Galtier said. “Indeed, you are fortunate this did not happen with me.” He still marveled that it hadn’t. He’d been disloyal after the Americans invaded Quebec. He clearly remembered that. But Nicole had gone to work at the hospital, she and Leonard O’Doull had fallen in love, Quigley had agreed to pay rent, and the Americans had not treated him so badly after all. He’d thrived since they came. Quebec had prospered, too. And he had a half-American grandson. Sure enough, he was at peace with Americans now.

Bishop Pascal said, “Naturally, my son, you can comprehend that it is awkward for this fine hospital to rest on land where, if the owner so desires, he may, at a whim, order it to leave so he might seed the soil with lettuces.”

“Lettuces?” Galtier said. “Certainly not. That is wheat land, and wheat land of the first quality, I might add.”

Jedediah Quigley seemed to need both hands to hold on to his patience. “Whatever you raised on it is beside the point,” he said. “The point is, the Republic of Quebec wants to buy that land from you, so no troubles of the sort Bishop Pascal is talking about can arise. I’m involved here because I am the one who took that land from you in the first place.”

“You wish me to
sell
part of my patrimony?” Galtier knew he sounded as if Colonel Quigley had asked him to sell one of his children. He didn’t care. That was how he felt—even if, at times, he wouldn’t have minded getting rid of Georges.