Gorgeous East (21 page)

A sweet-looking young man rises from among a crowd of jolly drinkers in a German beer garden and begins to sing an innocent pastorale that grows increasingly fervent. “Oh Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign your children have waited to see. . . .”

And the red and black flags go up and the jolly beer drinkers start goose-stepping around and the sweet-looking young man strips off his coat with a flourish to reveal the sinister armband of the Hitler Youth.

Smith sang, cold, off the top of his head, without the benefit of vocal exercises or scales. He stumbled on the first verse but warmed after that. His voice, crackling and frail from disuse, quickly gathered strength. Colonel de Noyer watched critically, leaning on his piano. Smith put everything he had into the last verses, as much emotion as he could summon from his dried-up heart.

“
Bon,
” the colonel said when he was finished. “Another one. Give me a range of what you can do. Stretch your voice.”

Smith sang on, selections from
Brigadoon
,
Oklahoma!
,
Guys and Dolls
,
Finian’s Rainbow
, as dawn rose over Paris, over the Sacré-Coeur, gleaming on its hill for the sins of 1870; over the Trocadero and the golden dome of the Invalides. The audition ended; the strangest of Smith’s life. Colonel de Noyer gently closed the keyboard cover and rose to pace the room.

“A fine voice,” he said. “
Mes compliments
. Truly professional quality. Technically perfect.”

“Thank you, sir,” Smith said.

“And yet—” The colonel stopped pacing. “Viva Paris!” he exclaimed.

Smith looked at the man blankly. Was he crazy too? Was everyone crazy?

“No, I’m not insane.” The colonel grinned. “At least not yet. What I’m talking about is art, Mr. Smith. Viva Paris—it’s a story Lorca tells. Do you know Lorca?”

Smith nodded. “I played Leonardo in
Blood Wedding
off-off-Broadway.”

“Lorca was a great aficionado of the flamenco, you see. He writes somewhere of a dancer, a beautiful, determined young woman who studied for many years and achieved a complete mastery of technique. There wasn’t a step she couldn’t execute, her gestures were perfect, everything done with vigor, absolutely nothing that could be criticized. She toured the provinces to great acclaim and at last came to the famous Alcazar in Madrid, where all the best flamenco artists must come sooner or later and where reputations are made or broken. All the critics were there that night, the newspapermen, the theater directors, the true
aficiones
. Lorca himself was there, though somewhat drunk. The house lights went down, the woman danced. She dominated the stage, absolutely . . .”

The colonel paused, staring out the window into nothing.

“So the dance ended. This was the moment when the applause rises up like thunder to heaven, where they cover the stage with roses. There was only silence. The dancer, no longer young, had spent years of her life, forsaken lovers, friends, family, to achieve this technical perfection. But technical perfection does not lie at the heart of flamenco or any other art. The dancer stood there, breathing heavily, covered in sweat, waiting for the applause, perhaps not understanding. At last, a single critic rose to his feet and began to clap his hands very deliberately.

“ ‘Viva Paris,’ he called out. ‘Viva Paris.’

“And the entire audience took up this chant, which was the greatest insult imaginable coming from these passionate Spaniards, these lovers of flamenco. To them Paris represented all that was slick and professional, all glitter and no heart and full of false glamour—qualities Catholic priests usually attribute to the devil. The dancer fled the stage of the Alcazar, crushed. She ran to the nearest bridge and threw herself over the side. Those who witnessed this leap said it was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen. She seemed to fly like a bird, inscribing a beautiful, flaming arc in her red flamenco dress against the blue sky. One would like to think that she had finally dispensed with perfect technique and become a part of the dance she sought to master. Unfortunately this was her last act. She went under and was swept away by the waters of the Manzanares. Her body was never found.”

Colonel de Noyer returned to his piano when he had finished this monologue and resumed playing his Satie. Smith remained silent, a chill running up his spine.

“Is that a true story?” Smith said at last.

“More or less.”

“You’re talking about my singing.”

The colonel stopped playing. “Your voice is impeccable, like the flamenco dancer’s steps, Mr. Smith, and cannot be criticized. But there is—how should I put it—too much ego involved.”

Smith didn’t say anything.

“And there is something lacking, something essential to an artist.
Duende
, the Spanish called it—the term is untranslatable because it has no precise meaning.
Joy
,
spontaneity
,
soul
,
passion
—all these words come close, but not quite. Maybe the Legion can teach you a bit of
duende
, I don’t know. But let me ask you a question now. A very important question. Why do you want to do this terrible thing to yourself?”

“Which terrible thing?”

“The Legion, Mr. Smith.”

“I have my reasons,” Smith said.

“As does everyone,” the colonel replied dryly. “However, it appears from your CV that you’ve made a reasonably successful career on the musical stage in America. For your sake I urge you to spare yourself much pain and suffering and return to it.”

“Not much of a career these days,” Smith confessed. “I had a few lucky breaks early on, but I haven’t worked much in the last couple of years. Talent just isn’t enough in New York anymore. You need to have the right connections. I don’t have any connections, not really. I’m from Iowa, my family’s from Iowa, for generations. And my agent dumped me and I can’t seem to get another one. I’ve been to a dozen open casting calls since last November, but”—he shook his head—“nothing. I’ve failed. I’m a loser.”

“And you are also an idiot!” Colonel de Noyer snapped. “The Legion deserves its reputation as an army of the damned! A home to murderers, thieves, drug addicts, sodomites! Men whose only alternative is prison or suicide. You may have failed in New York, as you say, but are you one of these?”

Smith looked away. He refused to answer.

“Ah . . .” The colonel nodded thoughtfully. “I will tell you why men such as yourself seek out the Legion. Not at all for the reasons they say—to find adventure, to escape from failure, or bury a broken heart. These things are a subterfuge. The real reason is because they wish to punish themselves for being themselves, for being a stupid drunk or for being a coward or for having done nothing of value with their lives. Or worst of all, for having no honor. Well, if it’s punishment you seek,
mon enfant
, you have come to the exact right place. Your perfect voice will earn you no special treatment. You will suffer the same harsh discipline as your comrades. The Legion will abuse you as you’ve never experienced—physical, mental, spiritual punishment. Tell me, truthfully, is it punishment you seek?”

“Yes,” Smith whispered, his eyes downcast. He could barely hear his own voice.

“And why do you desire this punishment?”

“Because . . .” There was a woman, he wanted to say. Because I caused her death. Because I was weak and selfish. Because I raped her. . . . Smith looked up. None of this was exactly right.

“Because I have no honor,” he said.

Their eyes met. Colonel de Noyer nodded sadly. Then he rose and kissed Smith on both cheeks.

“Welcome to the Legion.”

10.

M
orning light shone through the barred windows of the Legion recruitment office at the Fort de Nogent. The hum of early traffic flowed along distant boulevards in another world. Then came the blare of a lone bugler playing the reveille over the fort’s loudspeakers and the groans of belligerent, exhausted men and the clank and scrape of water through rusty pipes sounding like prison doors rasping shut forever.

Smith, his voice hoarse from so much unaccustomed vocal exercise, returned to Sergent-chef Pinard, whom he had hoped in vain never to see again, and was taken by two subalterns into a side room where, for the second time in three weeks, his possessions and clothes were stripped from him, even his underwear and socks. Nude, he was issued a pair of unwashed denim overalls that stank of human sweat and rancid French cigarettes, and the same sort of Chinese-made sneakers without laces that had been given to him in jail in Istanbul—the mandatory footwear, he guessed, of desperate men.

Sergent-chef Pinard entered and handed him a two-page contract printed on thin blue paper in French, which Smith couldn’t read.

“What does it say?” Smith said, though he knew he would sign even if the contract stipulated his soul henceforth belonged to the devil.

“It says the next five years are for the Legion,” the sergent-chef said wearily. “It says you’re fucked, so shut up,
mongol américain
, and sign.”

Smith signed in three places, then the contract was torn away from him and replaced with a large pink card with the words NOM DE GUERRE printed at the top.

“Write a new name,” Pinard said. “You can be whoever you want. And a new birthday. Write it down.”

Smith hesitated. This was
l’anonymat
, one of the sacred traditions of the French Foreign Legion: Every volunteer would be received into its ranks with a blank slate, name and identity taken from him, past crimes erased. Here as nowhere else on earth—such was the legend—a man would be given the chance to redeem himself. Smith knew he had been lazy, weak, and stupid, but mostly weak. He tried to think up a new name that would characterize his terrible weakness of soul and, after a long minute’s reflection, wrote CASPAR P. MILQUETOAST in large block letters.

“What’s today’s date?” He looked up at the sergent-chef.

“Le premier Avril.”

“Perfect,” Smith said. “April Fools’ Day.”

He put down April 1, 1977, as his birthday, thus shaving off the last two and a half miserable years of his life and making himself thirty again. That should be about right, he thought, before Jessica and I went to Istanbul. He handed the pink card back to Sergent-chef Pinard, who folded it in half and put it in his pocket.

“You are an idiot,” Pinard said. “You will bring the Legion no good.”

“We’ll see about that,” Smith said, then Pinard turned away with a disgusted grunt and Smith was led away, humming a line from “Fascinating Rhythm”—Oh, how I long to be the man I used to be!—to himself for courage. The subalterns marched him out a side door and down a flagstone path into a large, decrepit gymnasium. Here, canvas and wood fencing dummies, relics from those days when every gentleman officer was obliged to maintain a thorough knowledge of swordsmanship, lay stacked in moldering heaps around the central beams. Pigeons rustled in the rafters near broken clerestory windows. Grimy green paint, probably lead-based and toxic, peeled in long strips off the walls.

A dozen volunteers of various nationalities, wearing the same laceless Chinese sneakers and dirty denim overalls, dozed or fidgeted or stared into space in rickety wooden chairs arranged in even rows at the center of the room. This bunch looked half starved and crazy and their immediate environment stank of cheap wine, urine, sweat. One of them, a large hairy man who might be an Arab or a Turk, displayed a disturbing visible twitch—one side of his face curling into a ferocious grin then uncurling two or three times a second. A sleeping African, his face showing vivid tribal scars, snored loudly, head back, mouth wide open.

Smith sat down in the chair farthest away from anyone else and tried not to make eye contact and tried also not to think about what he was doing. Doom gathered like a cloud in the pigeon-haunted rafters. Smith knew he had just willingly thrown himself into the lower depths, like a suicide off a cliff. His nearest neighbor, a vile-smelling rat-faced kid, maybe eighteen, with a mop of uncombed red hair, suddenly leaned forward and gushed thick streams of wine vomit all over the floor. The stench was immediate and awful. Disgusted, Smith picked up his chair and moved it across the gym.

The other volunteers stared. It was as if Smith, by moving himself away from them, had committed an outrageous act. A moment later, the mop-headed kid stood, wiping puke from his mouth with the back of his hand, and approached.

“
Peut pas supporter le bordel?
” he said with a sneer.

“Sorry,” Smith said, warily. “My French is not so good.”

“Fock’n hell!” the man exclaimed in a thick Scots accent not much easier to understand than his French. “You fock’n U.S.A.?”

“U.S.A. all the way,” Smith said.

“What’s a fockn’ ’merican doing here? Fock’n daft or what?”

Smith shrugged. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m fock’n mad as a hatter,” the kid said. “Absolutely daft. An’ a bludy fock’n dipso to boot. One more year on the outside, I’ll drink m’self to death.”

“Oh,” Smith said.

An abrupt silence followed. The kid’s eyes drifted, eerily unfocused, and Smith got the impression of a childhood head injury that hadn’t been properly treated.

“Legion’s bludy fock’n hell,” the kid persisted. “Y’know that, right? Wors’ kind o’hell yur ever gonna experience.”

“I’ve been through a couple different kinds of hell already,” Smith said. “One more . . .” He shrugged.

“Fat cunt like you . . .” The kid spit, his tone suddenly insulting, his bony hands curling into fists. “You don’t know what the fock hell is!”

Smith tensed himself for a fight and felt a jolt of fear course through his guts, but was at the same time curiously exhilarated. Isn’t this what men were supposed to be doing? Fighting each other over nothing?

The kid drew closer and Smith could smell the vomit on his stale breath. “We’re talkin’ terrible beatings,” he hissed. “Fifty-k marches on an empty stomach.
Marche ou crève
—that’s what they say. Forget all that Legion Is My Country shyte. March or Die, that’s th’ unofficial motto, an’ it’s the fock’n truth! You stop marching and they leave you behind for the fock’n jackals an’ the bludy savages to finish you off.”