Читать книгу All That Glitters - Martine Desjardins - Страница 7

I

IACTA ALEA EST. Let there be no mistake: the game has begun. I can feel it in my fingertips as I roll the dice, and in the pit of my stomach as they skitter across the baize. Each winning cast causes my stones to constrict with excitement. Nine times out of ten, I win. For the last week, luck has been coursing like fresh blood through my veins. My dice cup has become a cornucopia that repays me one-hundredfold all that I might have lost before.

Around me, the men mutter that I must have been born under a lucky star, or issued from my mother’s womb enveloped in a fetal membrane of good fortune. The poor losers wonder aloud if, perhaps, I have not rubbed the hump of a hunchback or consorted with the hanged. Few are more superstitious than soldiers in wartime. Meanwhile, I prostrate myself at fortune’s feet and there reap the bountiful harvest of her generosity. Yet behind this unhoped-for run of luck, I detect a design greater than luck itself, the intentions of which are, for the moment, unfathomable. With each roll of the dice I feel I am moving across the squares of an immense game-board, whose ultimate course and whose obstacles I cannot distinguish, whose rules I cannot yet grasp. I have no idea where it will all lead. All I can say with any certainty is that it began last Sunday.

On that afternoon, a series of coincidences had deposited me at Stonehenge. I was to have been on leave in London with my mates, but on the way to the station my shoelace had come undone, my forage cap had blown off, and I had missed the train—by no more than five seconds. The cogwheels of fate mesh with uncanny precision!

Determined to make the best of a bad lot, I jumped aboard a lorry heading for Salisbury, where I spent an hour looking for a dice cup at an antiquarian’s, who had little to offer, save a goblet covered in petit point. I took my meal in the town, quaffing a pint of beer to sluice down a slice of mutton stewed to the consistency of boot leather, then struck out on foot across the open fields toward the campground.

There was a briskness in the air, and the wind stung like pins and needles. The hoarfrost that coated the puddles crackled beneath my heels like barley sugar. I was rapidly drawing near the monuments of Stonehenge. Though my battalion had been in training in the nearby countryside for the last four months, I had never set foot there. I might well have kept going had I not caught a glimpse, from the road, of a white-coiffed head making its way between the megaliths. Beneath it I believed I could distinguish the uniform of an army nurse—a cape the colour of a blue jay’s plumage that had won the ladies the nickname of Bluebirds. Well, well! What would an army nurse be doing in these parts? Turning toward her, I hastened my step.

Seen from afar, the dolmens of Stonehenge resemble a pile of cubes, but from close up, they tell quite a different story. Some stand a good twenty feet tall and must weigh several tons. The megaliths form an enclosure within which stand two concentric circles of smaller menhirs. Except for the stones, the place appeared deserted. Where could the nurse have gone? As I was wondering if she had not simply vanished into thin air, a rustling of fabric made me raise my head. And so I spied her, perched atop a massive, toppled stele. A thought crossed my mind: when the hens go to roost, the storm cannot be far behind.

“Have you also come to play?”

Her voice, like the rest of her person, affected me as would some turbulence in the atmosphere. Her face had a changing quality about it, like a sky filled with rapidly scudding clouds. If you did not like its appearance, you could simply wait a few moments for an entirely different impression to occur—which I was not inclined to do. I had no complaint about her face, except that it had begun to make my head spin.

“Play what?”

“Dice! They say the stones of Stonehenge form an immense wheel of fortune that can change your luck for the better.”

So, the lady was a roller of dice. That, at least, would explain the turbulence.

“Nothing plays upon fortune like fortune itself. It’s a vicious circle.”

“Even if you’re not superstitious, there’s nothing to lose by trying.”

She waved her right hand, and with a languid shiver I recognized the familiar rattle of impatient dice. Her other hand was gloved, and she held it across her waist, as though she were paralyzed.

“Where I come from, women don’t play dice.”

“Is that so? And where would that be?”

“High Bluff.”

“High Bluff?”

“Manitoba.”

“And why didn’t you stay there?”

How innocently her eyelashes fluttered … You would have sworn the question was completely disingenuous. Still, she had dismissed me; of that I had no doubt. There was no reason why I should not reply brusquely, in kind, but I decided to remain civil.

“I answered the call of the mother country.”

She all but burst out laughing. Then quickly thinking better of it, she looked at me with a knowing smile.

“Just like me, of course. Yet no one marches off to war without hidden motives.”

The harder I worked to avoid her piercing gaze, the more insistently it darted to and fro around me, as if to cut off all possible paths of retreat. I experienced a moment of weakness, a movement of self-betrayal. But rapidly I righted myself.

“Disasters have always attracted me. In High Bluff, I would run a mile in the middle of the night to watch a house on fire. As I see it, there is no greater tinderbox than Flanders.”

“True, and we will soon have all the fire we want.”

Did she mean to mock or approve of my brash manner? It mattered little to me. As far as I could determine, it would take nothing less than a raging fire to amuse this young lady. The fabric of her coif snapped in the wind as though it might be carried away at any moment. A rebellious lock of pale golden hair had slipped free and brushed against her cheek. I felt a sudden desire to seize it, wrap it around my finger, then take hold of her entire mane. With a single, rapid motion, I clambered up the stele and sat down beside her. The war was now far from my thoughts.

“We might as well begin. The first to roll a double ace wins.”

Where her knotted brows converged, three tiny folds formed a fleeting palm frond.

“It isn’t the most exciting of games, unless the stakes are high.”

From my pocket I produced the meagre funds remaining. There must have been the equivalent of three dollars. The nurse quickly acquiesced and handed me her dice cup. I must confess I was rather startled: it was the same goblet covered in petit point I had seen that very morning at the antiquarian’s.

The game lasted an hour, perhaps two. We would no doubt have continued playing had my adversary not exhausted her stake, and been forced to admit defeat. I won fifteen dollars—the equivalent of two weeks’ allowance! As I was about to pocket the money, the gloved hand seized my arm.

“Not so fast, soldier boy. You owe me my revenge.”

“Tell me where and when, and I’ll be only too delighted to oblige.”

“Here. Now.”

“It’s getting late. Soon they’ll be sounding the curfew.”

“Just one round.”

“Double or nothing, then.”

“If I lose, I shan’t be able to pay. Forget the money. Instead, I’ll show you something I’ve never shown anyone else.”

I looked long and hard at the wad of banknotes in my hand. I considered the bait she dangled before me. Then I put the money on the table.

“So be it.”

It quickly became clear that by upping the ante, she had changed the nature of the game. It had become a breathless struggle that gained in intensity what it lost in civility. Rolls of the dice followed one another impetuously; every failure of the dice to produce double sixes caused my adversary to writhe in impatience. I was blind to the stones around me; they might as well have been horses on a carousel. Vertigo swept over me, and twice I nearly dropped the dice cup. Just as I was beginning to wonder when this race would end, I rolled a double ace. I could feel my heart’s blood overflowing.

The nurse bent over the dice to make sure she’d seen clearly.

“Yours is the luck of the devil.”

There was rapture in her voice, as though she were relieved to have lost. Her astonished mouth remained half-open. I don’t know what stopped me from kissing her right then and there.

“And my pay-off?”

“There’s the money. All you have to do is take it.”

“Don’t try and back out of your promise.”

With a look of resignation she removed her glove, pulling slowly at each finger, and laid her left hand on my knee. At the very point where her thumb and index finger met, she had attached a small pigeon feather of iridescent grey. So that was what she had never shown anyone else? I was beginning to feel a bit cheated.

Before she could withdraw her hand, I took it in mine.

“Surely I can allow myself the privilege of a touch.”

Though her fingers did not tremble, they could not remain still. I tightened my grip.

How deceptive are appearances. The feather was not a real one. It was a fine silken embroidery, each stitch of which had been sewn into her skin. It took my breath away.

“You have the most curious foibles.”

“They are surgical sutures.”

“In that event, the surgeon was a skilful one.”

“Don’t make me laugh. In my trade, I see scars of all kinds. Let me assure you, the most hideous ones are the work of surgeons. Even at the best of times they stitch up wounds every which way, so just imagine the stigmata they can leave in wartime. If only they would allow nurses to mend human tissue … But they refuse to trust our delicate fingers. With the mass of wounded awaiting us in Flanders, they will have no choice; they will have to call on us. But in the meantime, I practice on myself.”

I was still holding her hand, reluctant to let go.

“When I’m wounded, will you save me?”

She got to her feet with a shrug.

“Oh! You … You’ve nothing to fear. The devil always takes care of his own.”