AN: My first foray into Band of Brothers. I mean no disrespect to the real heroes of Easy Company, and the characters I describe belong to HBO.
Being damned, I am amused
To see the centre of love diffused
And the waves of love travel into vacancy
It's been two years, and, miles away from home, he's seen the strangest things. He's felt raw adrenalin strip away the lining of his blood vessels, heard the screams of anguished women and realised, as though underwater, that they come from his own lungs. He's eaten things best worth forgetting, been so crippled with cold that it seemed inconceivable that he would ever be warm again. And in all this, the sleep snatched where he stands, the crumbling cities, the soggy cartons of smokes, and the endless, endless dying, the strangest truth he's found is this; there is beauty in war.
There is beauty in the mountains of Austria, unsullied and unaltered by the ravages of men hungry for glory, still blessed with sunshine, as though he still believes in blessings, as though he still believes in sunshine. The placid pools and lakes into which they dive with squeals that herald in an age of uncertain peace envelop them with the dreadful beauty of nature. He feels small, terribly small, and terribly mortal, in the shadow of such wonder. And for the scars he himself has inflicted on the planet, he feels steady, creeping guilt.
More than this magnificence, there is beauty in every droplet of water that falls from the rope, impossibly loud in the darkness, as they steal across the river. It is like a winding gash in the earth, black and lustrous, and the ripples that ruffle the surface are perfect, so achingly perfect that everything else feels spoiled.
There is beauty in the fingernails of a German girl, in the half-moons of white at her cuticles, and the traces of dirt around them, and in the creases of her knuckles. She belongs to this land, and he is a stranger here, with a ready laugh and a smile as wide as the ocean, invading the grief and the guilt that stains this nation. If he dared to lift her fingers to his mouth, would he taste blood? No, he thinks, he can taste nothing over the stickiness of murder on his own tongue.
The shells, too, are beautiful. He thinks of Coney Island, and corn dogs spitting fat, and swooping, sparkling rides, and fireworks trumpeting liberty and freedom and America, and wishes upon falling stars. Beside him, the eyes and teeth of his friends' upturned faces court the wash of the flares, and every bone in their beautiful skulls is licked with white, and his heart throbs with awe.
There is beauty in the rivulets of scalding hot water running down his thighs, the pool of dissolving, disappearing dirt escaping into the gutters, where it belongs. His own flesh is beautiful, firm and springy, trembling with life, and every smear of mud, sweat and blood washes away effortlessly. Though, he cannot sleep at night for the chafing of grime and filth inside him, in the very marrow of his bones.
There is beauty in the smell of cigarette smoke, the haze of nicotine and enforced joy that cloaks the pubs and inns of England, and settles like the dust of Pompeii on the stripes of his dress uniform. There is tragedy in the laughter of boys, and in the lips rimmed with dark ale, and in the sinewy wrists that flick careless darts at innocent, motionless targets.
And if this beauty elicits joy? And if it brings forth hot, violent tears at the dreadful, unimaginable cost? And if it must all, one day, pass away?
This, and more, he fails to contemplate, for the most beautiful sight of all sears itself eternally across the inside of his eyeballs. The most beautiful sight of all…a tangled, stuttering trail of red, seeping into the snow, each crystal of water suddenly, jerkily, stained, translucent but twinkling in the meagre sunlight that falls through the black pine. And at the end of this gory path, whimpering, twitching, staring in horrified disbelief at a tattered, ruined stump, bony fingers scrabbling among the snow and the blood and the falling needles, the manifestation of beauty. Joe, alive, blinking furiously to wipe out a crippled future, his mouth twisted, taunted by the memory of Toccoa, running nimbly through fields of mud, hopping easily over tangled branches. The whites of his eyes are showing, and that face, the face lined with the lessons of the city and the burdens of fierce, unrelenting friendship, screwed up in agony, every twitch of his vibrant nerves marked in his brow and in his eyes.
Luz sees it all in those eyes, a future so long, so peaceful, so ordinary, and so alive – a future none but Joe Toye deserves. He has never seen anything so immeasurably beautiful, and for once in the deep forests of Bastogne, his breath clouding in dragon spirals, fingers fumbling already for a cigarette, he is warm.
Thoughts? Feelings? xx