A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

Nicolò turned to look in the direction his guide had indicated, and he saw a lightened mass of buildings that, even in the darkness, conveyed a reassuring and uniquely Italian sense of dilapidation. “What’s so great over there?” Nicolò asked. “There aren’t even any lights on.” “I don’t mean there,” Alessandro said, thinking of snow-capped mountains and the electrifying past. “I mean far beyond; if you flew into the night as if in a dream, and rose, the wind tight against your face, the stars drawing you to them, the landscape beneath you blue-black. I have suddenly vaulted into the mountains,” he said, “after never having gone back, ever, for fear of encountering my lost self.” “There aren’t any people up there anymore, fighting wars. Once things happen, they pass, and that’s it.” “No,” Alessandro said. “If they happen once, they stay forever. I never spoke of them, because I have faith that they are everlasting, with or without me. I’m not afraid to die, because I know that what I have seen will not fade, and will someday spring full blown from someone not yet born, who did not know me, or my time, or what I loved. I know for sure.” “How?” “Because that is the soul, and whether you are a soldier, a scholar, a cook, or an apprentice in a factory, your life and your work will eventually teach you that it exists. The difference between your flesh and the animate power within, which can feel, understand, and love, in that very ascending order, will be clear to you in ten thou...