A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

He knew very well that love could be like the most beautiful singing, that it could make death inconsequential, that it existed in forms so pure and strong that it was capable of reordering the universe. He knew this, and that he lacked it, and yet as he stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia, watching diplomats file quietly out the gate, he was content, for he suspected that to command the profoundest love might in the end be far less beautiful a thing than to suffer its absence.

Orfeo cleared his throat. “I would like to be killed . . . in the whitest most boneless valley of the moon, where the blessed sap congeals like alabaster and flows in dough-like strata. I would like to be killed within earshot of the soundless sweep of the blessed one’s hot golden robe as it decapitates the breathless atmospheres of the lighter planets and takes the air of day from the unchangeable path of the holy blessed sap.” He paused. “I would not like to be killed with a bayonet,” he said, smiling. “No?” “No, he wouldn’t like it.” “Who?” “The great master of the holy

gracious sap, the lord whose foot quashes suns, who directs and interprets through my tense hand the jerky flow of the holy blessed sap. The sap of his outermost capillaries plays havoc with the earth, for the way the sap exits in lines and curves is the scythe of fate. As the holy blessed sap falls in chanting forms, life and death follow. Not even a breaking wave could strike harder than the blessed sap as it quietly dries on parchment and vellum wrenched from the innards of piously dancing sheep.”

“Reason excludes faith,” Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. “It’s deliberately limited. It won’t function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can’t do it absolutely. That’s because you can’t do anything absolutely by reason. That’s because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don’t think God is interested in

the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that.”

“Life is so quick that it’s all played out at the gates of death, and the value of resolution is that it quickens life.”

“I’ll never appreciate it. I’ve been trained out of it. I don’t want money. I want much more. I want what rarely happens. I want what people are afraid even to imagine.” “Like what?” “Resurrection, redemption, love.”

“Maybe God will make me rich someday.” “Possibly.” “God didn’t make me rich to start. I don’t believe in Him anyway. My sister does.” “If you don’t believe in Him, how can

He make you rich?” “So what if He doesn’t.” “I don’t think He will. You may make yourself rich. He doesn’t care. “He doesn’t?” “No. Of that I am sure.” “Why?” “Money is one of the few things that He Himself didn’t invent. He invented birds, stars, volcanoes, the soul, beams of light—but not money.” “You believe in God, don’t you.” “Yes.” “How can you? What did He ever do for you?” “That’s not the point, what He did or didn’t do for me. In fact, He did a great deal, but for some He’s done a lot less than nothing. Besides, one doesn’t believe in God or disbelieve in Him. It isn’t an argument. “Though I used to argue it,” the old man said, “even with myself, when I was younger. His existence is not a

proportion to the rest of them they think they’re smart—but they’re not any smarter than a telephone book. A fact of humanity throughout history is the desirability, the necessity, of balance among the intellect, the spirit, and the flesh.” “Flesh, what flesh?” “Mortification of the flesh.” Nicolò drew back almost imperceptibly.