A Matter of Honor

Chapter Thirty-one

Tarbert Weir was the last person off the Lufthansa carrier and most of the early morning flight traffic had thinned by the time he picked up his bag from the luggage carousel. The coffee stands were open and the air was filled with the pungence of chicory, fresh rolls and cinnamon.

At the newsstand he bought a day-old New York Times, two packages of mint drops and a Norman Katkov novel in paperback. He set down his suitcase, fumbled through his pockets, then asked the newsdealer if he could pay him with a five-dollar bill. The man shrugged, took the money and gave Weir his change in Belgian francs.

At the street level loading ramp Weir walked past an airlines bus marked “Liege” and proceeded to the taxi rank. He signaled for the first driver in line to roll down his window. Weir asked what the fare would be to the Hotel du Sud, and when the man told him the general opened the rear door, swung his luggage onto the seat and climbed in beside it. The airlines bus was still taking on passengers and Weir noticed that one of them, a man who had passed his seat twice to visit the lavatory on the Heidelberg-Liege flight, seemed to change his mind suddenly. He walked away from his place in the queue and hailed a cab.

The gray stone hotel faced a bustling, mid-city square surrounded on three sides by banks, office buildings and elegant boutiques, on the fourth by the narrow footwalk and weather-darkened stone wall and balustrades that edged the River Meuse, gray on gray.

Weir asked for a double room on the sixth floor overlooking the river, and told the clerk to send up a continental breakfast with double coffee. An ancient bellman, stooped in black shirt and trousers with a red and white striped vest, waited while Weir talked with the concierge.

The general wanted three things. First, a rented Mercedes convertible brought around to the front of the hotel in exactly one hour. Second, a ticket, first class, on tomorrow’s 6:00 a.m. flight to Kassel, West Germany. And last, he requested the man to call the Rhein-Baden Hotel Spa in Kassel, ask for manager Fritz Vestrick in person, and let him know that Tarbert Weir would be checking in tomorrow.

When the bellman opened the door to his room, General Weir shuffled through the Belgian francs in his pocket, then tipped the man with a ten-dollar bill. The man thanked Weir profusely and peered at him with eyes suddenly attentive behind the rheumy cataracts. The general knew the Belgian would remember everything about this generous American, if anyone should happen to ask.

The breakfast tray was set with fine blue china and the mat and napkins were damask, worn and laundered to the thinness of old silk. Weir took a cup of steaming coffee to the French windows overlooking the square. He had stayed in this hotel with Maggie the night before they had visited the Tranchets’ farm. It had been chilly then too, and he remembered having stood with his wife at a similar window, not touching her but aware of her warmth, her presence as she watched the Liegian flower vendors wheel their carts into the gray square below, daffodils, windflowers, carnations and sprays of pink and white fruit blossoms that stood out against the woody stems of giant pussywillows.

“I wish Mark could see this,” Maggie had said, wistfully. “When we settle on the farm in Illinois, Scotty, I’m going to try to grow pussywillows. They don’t have to be wild, I’m almost sure of that.”

Now the first flower cart of the day trundled up a side street and turned into the square, drawn by a Shetland pony with colored ribbons braided through its bridle. Weir let the curtain drop back into place and sat in the velour chair next to the bed. He forced himself to eat a croissant and drink a second cup of coffee. He felt restless but alive, his body tensed and vibrant with energy. It was impossible, almost obscene, the general thought, that with all the emotions, the anguish he had felt since his son’s death, he could still be stirred by an old excitement, the knowledge that he would soon be driving through historic terrain, that he would again see the Tranchet farm and the lilac tree.

He looked at his watch, aware that time was moving slowly. He decided to go down into the square and shop among the flower carts. He would bring a bouquet to Marta Tranchet. The little Shetland had been pulling a cart of fresh tulips, Weir remembered, the flowers brilliant in a dozen colors with petals as smooth and perfect as candlewax.

A half hour later he was traveling at top speed away from the outskirts of the old city and into the Ardennes. As soon as the Meuse River was behind him and the narrow highway curved into foothills and deep woods, he was already traveling into higher, thinner air, through stands of firs, with ridges of snow lining the roads. In the larger cities so much had changed, the general knew. Malmedy, St. Lo, St. Vith, even stately Liege, all these had high rises, fast food restaurants and autobahns with bewildering cloverleaf patterns and flashing directional signs and signals. But the countryside seemed the same.

General Weir was indulging himself, he knew, allowing his thoughts to stray from the mission at hand because his emotions were challenged, because he was traveling through a land of youth, of ghosts, hallowed ground where justice had once been served, or so the young men who died there had thought. Verviers was to the east of him, south were Stavelot, Malmedy, St. Vith. In so many ways, it had been a simple war, Weir thought, and a simple battle in that last German counterattack in the Bulge. The issues were clear, right versus wrong. No one was foolish enough to be eager to die, but a soldier accepted that as a necessary price. He had never been able to explain that to Mark. He had never even tried to explain it, he realized, because he had only come to understand it later himself. Tarbert Weir and his generation had believed that wise and loyal men simply grew into the responsibilities of patriotism, that unquestioning fidelity to one’s country was a part of manhood. As time passed, it was becoming clear to him that what he had so long believed in might not necessarily be true for younger men.

Climbing into the Belgian hills in his rented Mercedes, Scotty Weir could almost imagine again the flash of artillery fire on distant ridges, the pounding of the V-l’s and V-2’s, the vision of the German attack forces in white, camouflaged by sleet and snow as they milled and regrouped among the snow-whitened trees.

Weir stopped on a crest and looked down into a valley darkened by fog and the woodsmoke rising from a scattering of farmhouses. A pickup truck that had been behind him almost from Liege caught up, swerved around him and disappeared around a bend in the road.

There was too much that succeeding generations did not know or care about each other, Weir thought, and he himself had been part of that conspiracy of silence. He and his compatriots had been better prepared to serve their country than Mark’s generation, he knew. Not more altruistic nor courageous, that would be a selfish judgment, but at least they had been bolstered by the support of their own country and the trusted platitudes that made sacrifices respectable, even glorious.

My generation never had the dilemma of multiple choices, he thought. They knew nothing of unemployment insurance, affirmative action, student loans, the politics of protest and confrontation, welfare, housing subsidies, burning draft cards, chanting “traitor” and “murderer” at servicemen in uniform and the country’s elected leaders as well.

Scotty Weir drove on into the morning with a feeling of sadness clouding his buoyant mood. He was not thinking of Mark now as a son, that eager little boy, nor as the still lieutenant resting on the morgue slab in Chicago, but as if they were miraculously the same age at the same time, two young soldiers in uniform, side by side, wanting to talk.

“... we thought of our part in that war as an act of humanity, Mark. There was a sense of brotherhood then. I’m sure of that, a continuity of life in what we tried to do...”

Weir’s thoughts were so vivid that he felt for a moment he might have spoken aloud, but there was no sound in the Mercedes except the smooth turn of the engine and the hiss of the tires on the snowy road. After crossing a wooden bridge the general made a turn to the left and followed the twisting graveled road leading to the Tranchet farmhouse.

A carved wooden sign at the gate read “LeRoi.” When she was eighteen, Marta Tranchet had married Emile LeRoi, a prosperous feed merchant from nearby LePont, a man fifteen years her senior. Both the elder Tranchets were dead by then and though Colonel Weir was unable to attend the wedding, Maggie had selected a silver tea service, Regal Eagle pattern, and Marta had written later that it looked so well, “so American,” on a table in the bow window of the old dining room. Scotty would remember the room, she said. She and Emile had decided to make the farm their home, she added. He knew how much the place meant to her.

That fateful rendezvous with the Germans was nearly four decades ago, Marta Tranchet-LeRoi was a wife, mother and Belgian matron, but when Scotty Weir thought of her it was always the frail eight-year-old child with frightened eyes who stood out in his mind.