Karsh said, “Captain, I’d like to postpone this line of inquiry for a moment.” He turned back to Docker. “Lieutenant, let’s go directly now to your conversation with Jackson Baird on the night of December twenty-second. No one else was present at that time. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It was then, according to your deposition, that Baird finally told you the truth. Told you his father was Major General Jonathan Baird and that he’d deserted his post under fire on the first day of the German offensive.”
“Yes, that’s what he told me, sir.”
Karsh looked through several folders, frowning. “You’ve testified that on December seventeenth, the day Baird joined your section, you questioned him about his unit, how he’d been separated from it, and so forth. Then you and Corporal Trankic queried him again on related subjects on December twentieth. And on both occasions you testified that you believed his answers to be candid and credible. But here — the night of December twenty-second — after the boy had been through a dreadful ordeal, here you are hammering at him again.” Karsh looked steadily at Docker. “Why were you so convinced he was lying to you?”
Docker wished that the “truth” of this matter was as tangible, as demonstrable as the broken ring of enemy troops around Bastogne and the squadrons of Allied planes in the skies above the Ardennes. All he could say was, “Because his stories didn’t check out, sir.”
“I might ask you what stories, lieutenant, since you haven’t mentioned any so far that don’t hang together pretty well. But I won’t challenge that answer at this time.”
For what seemed the thousandth time to Docker, Major Karsh removed his glasses and rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. This time, though, in the glare of the light from the chandeliers, it seemed to Docker that the major’s eyes had lost some of their coldness and intensity.
“According to strict rules of procedure it’s not our business to make assumptions,” the major said. “But let’s assume for the moment that Baird told you the truth the first time you questioned him, lieutenant. And let’s assume he told you the truth the second time. Now try to imagine that youngster’s mental and emotional frame of mind. He had been through a terrible ordeal. He had been knocked unconscious by Corporal Trankic, left helpless and exposed during a bombardment.” Karsh hadn’t raised his voice, but now its tone had become harder and more insistent... “Yet after that harrowing experience, he still had to face a third grilling from you, lieutenant. Hasn’t it occurred to you that Baird might have been so shaken by all this that he finally reversed his original story and told you the one he was convinced you wanted to hear?”
The question was unexpected and jarring in its implication. Docker hesitated, felt a stir of doubt as he thought back to that conversation with Baird, remembering not only the words but the cold wind tearing at the tarpaulin in front of the cave, the caked blood on the boy’s lips, the bruises on his face and the anguish and pain in his voice when he talked of his father and those absent friends in the Hall of Gentlemen. And Docker wondered if Karsh had come on the real truth at last, an ultimate “true” truth. Could it possibly be that simple? That Baird had given up hoping to be believed, was so in need of acceptance, which he’d never gotten from his father... where he’d needed it most... that he’d lied because he thought that was what was wanted of him? And if that were the case, it made a joke of his own noble conviction about what Baird would have wanted... He remembered with bitter distress his moralistic tone to the major at the beginning of these hearings, tiresome banalities about men respecting courage because they’d lost it, talk from survivors about what the dead would truly want... wasn’t that just a way of establishing black and white moral categories, damning this, praising the other, all stemming from — what had Karsh’s phrase been? — opinions based on subjective evaluations? Had he simply been too goddamn righteous in this whole business, exercising the German colonel’s last bequest, the arrogance of total conviction?
Maybe... and yet Docker still believed, though not so strongly now, that he had at least tried in these hearings to give Baird a last chance to explain himself to his father...
“I won’t press you for an answer,” Major Karsh said. “But I can assure you I would be most interested in whatever response you might care to make. Specifically, to repeat myself, do you think Baird was simply telling you what he thought you wanted to hear?”
Docker shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure, sir.” His voice sounded muted in the drafty ballroom. “I can only give you my opinion, major—”
“Then let’s have that.”
“I felt the best thing Baird had going for him, the only thing, in fact, was to tell the truth. I thought he did. I still do, but I grant you I can’t be absolutely certain—”
When a knock sounded abruptly, the mood in the ballroom was so intense that Sergeant Corey visibly started. The MP corporal swung open the doors, accepted an envelope from an elderly lobby attendant and delivered it to Major Karsh, who opened the envelope and read the note inside it, then strapped on his wrist-watch and began collecting his notes and folders and putting them into his briefcase.
“Gentlemen, we will recess until ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said, but as he closed his briefcase, another thought seemed to occur to him and he looked directly at Docker. “Lieutenant, I said at the start of these hearings that I’d conduct them as openly as possible. Therefore, I will tell you that I have just received a confirmation from Lieutenant Whitter that he will be available to give testimony when the hearings reconvene tomorrow morning.”
There was mail at the Hotel Leopold for Docker, two letters someone had brought to his room and left on the bedside table. Since he had left Battery headquarters that morning before mail call. Docker assumed Captain Grant had sent them over to Liège with the supply truck.
One of the letters was from Dave Hamlin, dated February 2nd. There was mention of his commission, and of his father, who in Hamlin’s words looked worn and tired, and something about the German shepherd, Detroit, and coming down with dysentery. The other letter was from Lepont, his name and address written in ink, the script ruler-straight and graceful on the coarsely fibered envelope.
He showered in a thin drizzle of water and shaved before a mirror whose flecked surface reflected the overhead lighting in erratic patterns. As his face emerged with the strokes of the razor, he was puzzled by the bitterness in his expression. Still, it seemed an appropriate match to his cold eyes and the slivers of gray at his temples, the gray he still wasn’t used to... it had come too soon, he hadn’t been gone that long from the walks through the campus and the talks with Hamlin, the tubs of beer at beach parties and the noisy rides to New York in old cars and the long empty Sunday afternoons with his father... Putting on a fresh uniform, he tried to understand his depression. He uncapped his canteen and poured a splash of black whiskey into a glass and stared at his reflection, drinking slowly, feeling a coldness at first and then small explosions of warmth in his stomach. He touched the gold bars of his tunic and wondered what kind of soldier he had really been through all these years, knowing there would probably never be a “real” answer.