Netta’s Reviews > The Remembered Soldier > Status Update

And he sees himself stepping into the no-man's-land, he stands there completely unprotected on that precious, coveted patch of earth fought over by half the world, and God is cruel, but people are crueler, and he hunches down and begins zigzagging through the rain of bullets to the barbed-wire entanglement, between the lifeless bodies of his predecessors.

…just tell me how you want me, she says, standing in front of the romanticized battlefield, and he issues hesitant instructions, but whatever he says, she does meekly, and he understands why she loves photography, why he used to love it too, it creates the illusion of complete control, a few square inches of the world in which no disappointment, fear, or sorrow exists.

…they still haven't found his body, she says, and he hears the hope in her voice, vain hope, she knows that, […] and he tells her about his memory loss and how four years after the war, when no one thought it might still be possible, his wife and children found him, and it surprises him how easily his life can be reshaped into an inspiring story, correct in every factual detail, yet a lie from beginning to end.

No, she says, not like that, I wont have it, and she says it softly and can't look Dr. De Moor in the eye, but she is adamant, and Noon is so proud of her, and she is his wife, his wife, and for the first time he understands what it is to belong to someone, why people get married, a woman standing up for you as if for herself, and he'll never face anything alone again, as long as she's with him he knows he'll be safe

And she doesn't say it, but […] this simple man who stands before her in his scruffy asylum uniform, could never live up to the standards she's set for her Kamiel, who's been missing since December 1917, she's had almost five years to perfect him,he is her masterpiece, her sanctuary, and she's outraged that Dr. De Moors advertisement persuaded her that her Kamiel could ever assume the shape of a madman with amnesia