A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin

Author:Mark Helprin [Helprin, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

GUARIGLIA'S SHOP was in a ramshackle building that was part of a ruin. Hanging from heavy wooden beams and cast-iron rods were hundreds of harnesses and bridles. Two dozen saddles were mounted on small logs that projected from the walls.

Guariglia looked different out of uniform, yet neither better nor worse. Although his worn leather apron suggested that he knew his trade (and he did), he did not seem like a man with good prospects. When Alessandro entered the shop, Guariglia was anxious.

He crossed the floor, locked the door, and put up his lunch card. Alessandro noticed that Guariglia, too, wore all his medals. A small chill ran up Alessandros back when he realized that no doubt every deserter in Italy had decided on the same strategy. Guariglia, too, limped, but he was not pretending: his left leg below the knee was wood.

"What happened?" Alessandro asked.

"A harness-maker doesn't need legs. He only needs his hands."

"Who did this to you?"

As Guariglia walked to the back of the shop, Alessandro saw his children illuminated in the light of a brazier—a boy of about five and a girl of three. They huddled in a corner, with little leather horses in their hands, afraid to move.

"It's all right," Guariglia told them. He took them into his arms one at a time, and then they went to play. Embracing them as if he would never see them again, he had paused as he held them, taken a breath, and briefly closed his eyes.

"How can you live this way?" Alessandro asked as the children resumed galloping their leather horses across fields and forests on the floor.

"I have no choice."

"I don't understand why you submitted to such a thing. It's your leg, for Christ's sake."

"I submitted to nothing," Guariglia said firmly. "Harness-makers must sometimes work with the thickest and most stubborn pieces of leather. Did you ever cut a saddle? A harness-maker knows nothing if he doesn't know how to cut. We have the tools and the practice, and we cut leather, brass, and iron all day long."

"A harness-maker did it? You're lucky you didn't die. Who was it?"

Guariglia smiled half with embarrassment and half with pride. When Alessandros silence seemed as if it would last forever, Guariglia broke it. "I did it for them," he said, looking at the children. "It wasn't that difficult when I thought of why I had to do it."

"How did you stay conscious?"

"I willed it. I tied my leg above the knee for a long time. After that the whole thing was numb and there wasn't much blood. I made everything clean, I drank half a bottle of brandy, I bathed it all in alcohol, and I had the right tools. I can't tell you how much it hurt. It took an hour. What an hour. After I cauterized the wound I was near death for a week, but then I recovered."

Alessandro was astonished.

"When I pass military police, they salute! How do you like that? I've never been asked for my papers, not once.

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